Actually, a dual ladder system seems to work significantly well, and was how my old guild tackled AQ40/Naxx. Once we got to Huhu, we pretty much stopped and spent much of the week farming NR gear, and instead went into Naxx to pick of an easy boss or 2 (yes, we were slow). Keeping up a level of new activity was important to prevent burnout, and kept everybody fresh. Offering divergent progression to get to the top (I don't know why this image popped into my head, but I thought like the ninja wall jumping from Ninja Gaiden) seems to work to allow a constant sense of progression in the raider's minds.
I still think there should be a single, definitive, culminating dungeon to finish out an expansion. Arthas should be the final badass of WoTLK, not just 'what's behind final instance #1'.
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should chellenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.--Mark Twain
That’s why I was suggesting that changes that adjust the tenor of the fight without tremendously changing the difficulty would be better. Really making sure that all "styles" for the fight are of equal difficulty is just as hard as making sure that all the loot for the fight is equally desirable—but that should be the goal, rather than having some fight styles be intentionally harder.
On the other side, if something makes the fight unambiguously harder, then the gear should be unambiguously better.
One thing this comparison implies is that in the "different but the same difficulty" scenario, you can exercise control over what kind of loot you want: Fight it in way A, and have a better chance of melee weapons dropping, fight it in way B, and have a better chance of caster weapons dropping. Contrariwise, in the "more difficult but the same thing" scenario, you have to have exactly the same *sorts* of things in both fights, so that you never need to force people to fight it the easy way because easy mode drops an item that you won't be able to replace for two instances.
Another thing you could do, perhaps, is vary the *amount* of loot. Imagine if BugTrioMk2 dropped T7 gloves, if you kill UndeadVem last, you get 2 tokens, but if you kill UndeadKri last, you get 3 tokens. That way people are never really going to moan that they want to do it the easy way if they can do it the hard way, and it gives the better guilds a little more of a challenge and rewards them by gearing them up quicker.
Of course, it wouldn't have to be tokens - I know in the recent patch discussion people bring up how set tokens are more common than the little pieces of offset loot - trinkets, rings etc., so you could just have it drop an extra offset item. By having drops in addition to the easymode drops, the only reason people could have for not doing the hardversion if they're capable of it is laziness.
Think along the lines of the ZA chest rewards, but apply them to the Bug Trio method:
UndeadVem drops an Armour piece
UndeadYauj drops an Armour piece and a Weapon
UndeadKri drops an Armour piece and a Weapon and a Ring
Since each loot table favours most/all specs, you wont really get a case of 'oh the healers don't need and UndeadKri loot, let's just do UndeadVem so we can clear to The Twin DeathKnights quicker'
Show me a raid that can't kill Kael and I'll show you a raid with bad gear choices, bad spec choices, not taking full advantage of the badge vendor, not having fully enchanted gear, not using blue gems, etc, etc. You see these are CHOICES. If you CHOOSE to spec shadowstep over combat as a rogue for example YOU ARE COSTING YOUR RAID DPS. Yes that's right, because you're too fucking cheap to respec for arena, you made the difference between getting 3 weapons down vs 4. Expand this to a raidwide level and you see how encounters can get much harder. You're the asshole who's too cheap to flask. When the raid wipes at 1% it's your fucking fault. Again, expand to the whole raid.
Notice that 0 of these things have to do with skill, they have to do with laziness and apathy. You flat out don't give a fuck about your fellow raiders, and if they don't care that you're wasting their time, why the fuck should Blizzard.
This simply is not true.
I've been in a full raid, fully flasked, with correctly spec'd people who were simply not good enough at the game to perform adequately. I'll use Vashj as an example over Kael though I'm sure the same thing applies. We had several dps who were pretty well geared and just had really bad awareness, didn't notice spawns, and just could not react fast enough to dps the adds down. They also had an issue finding the right person to throw the core to/clicking/throwing fast enough.
They were trying, and judging by the level of frustration (from them) it was beyond their skill level.
It's hard to believe that someone could be that slow, or not be 'aware' enough to make these decisions and to fix these problems, but I've seen really bad players play, in person, and while you can help them to an extent... it's a huge time investment and then you have to take into consideration their maximum skill level, which they may be at.
The reason the bosses are easy is because Kael is hard. The same reason Ebonroc and Flamegor were easy, because Broodlord and Firemaw were hard. If you can't kill Kael with all the nerfs, upgrades to gear, T5+ caliber badge loot, etc, you should probably go back to Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
In summary, TBC raiding is easy. 9/10 encounters can be summarized with 1 phrase. Stay out of the fucking fire. If this is too difficult BWL was still there last I checked, so go have at it for some practice.
I don't get the logic. Are you suggesting there is only a maximum amount of difficulty points in the pot, and are distributed to each boss, and Kael got the biggest share, meaning most every boss past him had to be a pushover? Its a bit stupid that easier bosses drop better loot, but one of the hardest bosses in the game is the block to said content.
Kael's difficulty needs to be nerfed, and the difficulty in each successive boss needs to be buffed, but unfortunately that is just far to much to ask for Blizzard at this point, because they have barely been able to make original/entertaining encounters save for the gems. But where is the middle ground, a boss these days is either a stupid pushover with no original abilities, or a very quality encounter and a serious challenge.
"If you can't kill Gruul 1.0 with all the bugs, crappy Karazhan gear, pvp resilience, then you just suck" Its funny what you say now sounds so much exactly what top tier guilds were saying about the original Gruul, and yet look at where we are now.
NO ONE IS IN HYJAL or BT. Can you not get that through your head? Raiding is failing. People are getting sick and tired of paying for content they can't even enter (Like Naxx to wipe) that is offering mediocre gear upgrades over arena, or in some cases downgrades, and is rediculously hard to even start. At this point, if you are way past Kael, what does it matter if they nerf him so guilds that pay more to Blizzard then your individual, or small group of Black temple guilds, want a shot at him. I didn't realize killing a raid bosses required a master's in Elitist Jerks doctrine and specs and consumables, and what not.
I've been in a full raid, fully flasked, with correctly spec'd people who were simply not good enough at the game to perform adequately. I'll use Vashj as an example over Kael though I'm sure the same thing applies. We had several dps who were pretty well geared and just had really bad awareness, didn't notice spawns, and just could not react fast enough to dps the adds down. They also had an issue finding the right person to throw the core to/clicking/throwing fast enough.
They were trying, and judging by the level of frustration (from them) it was beyond their skill level.
It's hard to believe that someone could be that slow, or not be 'aware' enough to make these decisions and to fix these problems, but I've seen really bad players play, in person, and while you can help them to an extent... it's a huge time investment and then you have to take into consideration their maximum skill level, which they may be at.
I've seen plenty of people in T6 who can't even gear and spec themselves correctly, and you expect me to believe that you found some perfect storm raid of people who did that before Vashj, and yet were still too fucking incompetent to kill the boss. Pardon me if I don't believe that for a second.
BTW core macros++ another thing that you don't need to have any more brain power than my lunch to accomplish.
Also you said, you can help them, and they can change, this implies that they are making a choice to be bad players because they simply don't care. Why should content be dumbed down for players who aren't willing to help themselves, this isn't a case of the content being too hard, it's a case of the playerbase being unwilling to improve themselves.
I don't get the logic. Are you suggesting there is only a maximum amount of difficulty points in the pot, and are distributed to each boss, and Kael got the biggest share, meaning most every boss past him had to be a pushover? Its a bit stupid that easier bosses drop better loot, but one of the hardest bosses in the game is the block to said content.
No I'm suggesting that it is standard developmental practice to place easier bosses, after a hard bosses because placing multiple very difficult bosses in a row with a long learning curve tends to dishearten people. Thus past each very difficult boss there is frequently one or more easier bosses as a reward.
Kael's difficulty needs to be nerfed, and the difficulty in each successive boss needs to be buffed, but unfortunately that is just far to much to ask for Blizzard at this point, because they have barely been able to make original/entertaining encounters save for the gems. But where is the middle ground, a boss these days is either a stupid pushover with no original abilities, or a very quality encounter and a serious challenge.
I find it quite ironic that you're asking for one of the few interesting and well made encounters that actually provides some semblance of difficulty in TBC to be nerfed, and then crying that Blizzard isn't pushing enough fun and entertaining content.
"If you can't kill Gruul 1.0 with all the bugs, crappy Karazhan gear, pvp resilience, then you just suck" Its funny what you say now sounds so much exactly what top tier guilds were saying about the original Gruul, and yet look at where we are now.
The problem with Gruul 1.0 was the fact that where you were placed before shatter was completely out of your control and the damage high enough that you could effectively die to RNG. There's no dying to RNG at Kael, there simply isn't. (I'm also ignoring the consumable stacking to beat the soft enrage timer here).
NO ONE IS IN HYJAL or BT. Can you not get that through your head? Raiding is failing. People are getting sick and tired of paying for content they can't even enter (Like Naxx to wipe) that is offering mediocre gear upgrades over arena, or in some cases downgrades, and is rediculously hard to even start. At this point, if you are way past Kael, what does it matter if they nerf him so guilds that pay more to Blizzard then your individual, or small group of Black temple guilds, want a shot at him. I didn't realize killing a raid bosses required a master's in Elitist Jerks doctrine and specs and consumables, and what not.
No one is in Hyjal or BT eh? According to WoWJutsu, out of all the guild with at least a Karazhan kill, ~9% of them are currently in BT/Hyjal. ~45% of them are in SSC or TK. That seems like a lot of no ones to me. If you want to argue that people don't raid because you can lose your way to epics in arena you have a completely divergent point that needs to be addressed in a seperate thread, but the solution to that problem, is most definitely not to allow people to lose or cry their way to PvE epics.
Also in case you're wondering your incessant whining about people won't pay for content they don't get to see. At last check the WoW subscriber base was still climbing, and continued to climb even through Chicken Little idiots like you chanting this same mantra from the time Molten Core was released right up till today.
Last edited by XI- : 02/08/08 at 11:22 AM.
Reason: Added another response
NO ONE IS IN HYJAL or BT. Can you not get that through your head? Raiding is failing. People are getting sick and tired of paying for content they can't even enter (Like Naxx to wipe) that is offering mediocre gear upgrades over arena, or in some cases downgrades, and is rediculously hard to even start.
What? Even sketchy statistics such as those on WowJutsu show that a really significant portion of people who raid are in BT/Hyjal. Roughly 10%, and thats including a population of Karazhan raiders, so do with that what you will. I think you're going to be hard pressed to find people here who don't think (beyond the massive content deadzone since Illidan died) that WoW raiding isn't the best tuned it has ever been.
XI, if that's the case, and spec/gear/consumables are what wins the fight and not the players per se, what, in the end, makes you and yours, or Nihilum, so special? If any retard with the right buttons in front of them to push with the right buffs and passive skills behind them can do anything so long as they can 'move out of the fucking fire,' what prevents guilds that have the same level of commitment to farming and gear from accomplishing the same feats as you? More than that, what allows guilds with less dedication to spec and gear and buffing to accomplish the same goals where those that put forth the same effort as you guys in terms of gear and buffing and spec fail?
While gear and buffing and spec are important to be sure, does the gear play the game? Do the flasks play the game? Does the spec play the game?
Hell no.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that if you were to (god forbid) ebay your toon and give it to some spectacular nubtard, that nubtard would be the biggest failure in the game, simply because they don't know what the fuck they're doing. You make it sound like sick monkeys could bang their head against the keyboard and win, so long as the tank was flasked out and had a Thunderfury shoved up their butt.
That's the point we're trying to make. Those of us that don't live in the top 10 world servers don't exactly have the same amount of skill or honed abilities that you guys have. Us common folk still have to learn where it comes naturally or by learned instinct to you guys. This holds especially true for newer guilds that might only have 1-2 players with 3+ years of raiding experience, and everybody else is soft. Not sure why you hold contempt for everybody that isn't you or above you.
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should chellenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.--Mark Twain
Heigan is still hard at 70 for players that never did the fight, because there has never been a mechanic like that before or since.
Many of the fights are going to need significant mechanic changes to be workable for 25, and to be decently easy. It's not feasible to expect four hit-capped priests for Rasuvious, it's way too casual to demand all 25 people in full FrR for Saph, and it's ludicrous to expect 8 tanks for 4h unless you make them so wimpy that a holy pally/resto druid in bear form can tank them.
Actually, Heigan is easy. My guild only got to Sapph before the xpac so we returned last week to beat it. We killed Heigan before the first dance phase. And that's with all the veterans stopping dps at one point because we wanted to see the dance phase. All the post-TBC additions (more than half the raid) continued dpsing, though, as they didn't want to die on the dance phase.
I'm actually not opposed to Blizzard taking one of the hardest instances of a previous expansion and retuning it for the next expansion as the entry level raid. They could retune Black Temple for the expansion after WotLK as well for level 90 players. It lets casuals experience the lore and it's easy to do. The art and all that stuff are already there and it doesn't take much time away from designing harder dungeons.
Keep in mind that they fully intend to support a working model of 10man raiding in WoTLK (where BC was a test...), which is where a majority of those 'bad' players will end up instead of on the 25mans.
The bad players don't stay in the 10-mans, though. Granted, a guild full of bad players could spend months wiping on Attumen and never leave Kara. What really happens is this. The top guilds snatch up all the excellent players, leaving the good, average and bad players to fend for themselves. The good players form guilds to progress through content, but are forced to fill out raids with average (no real problem) and bad (why did we bring him again?) players because there's no longer enough good players to go around. All it takes is a quick glance around Shat or SW to see people in equal or greater progression than you, but obviously only have the gear because their guild needed a warm body to fill a slot. Excluding perhaps the most critical and challenging of fights, bad players will eventually make it into just about any content out there.
Looking at it from a perspective of numbers, there are many more "warm-body" guilds out there than elite guilds, so it'd be wiser to cater more content toward that end. As someone else suggested, adding in extra challenges (timed runs, for example) with extra loot as a reward could be a good way of mixing the two types of content. It could also be different from ZA to add extra incentive for the elite guilds. For example, currently in ZA the timed run essentially boils down to an extra piece of loot for four bosses, one of which being a "unique" mount. However, even if you're so bad that you can't kill one boss within the allotted time, you can still go around and see/fight every boss after the special event is over. Well, what if they give you X time to complete each boss, and each time you kill a boss fast enough it unlocks another boss that you have different amount of time to beat? This way the casuals will have a challenge, but they're not going to match the elite guilds' accomplishments simply by zoning in. It's kind of a sketchy idea, but it's something.
Originally Posted by Maczor
I know many people who share his view of gaming. I am of a similar mindset. I play the campaign of RTS games as their highest difficulty from the start, rather then playing in on "Easy" to quickly see the store and missions. Some people think this is stupid as it makes playing the game more frustrating, but I find it fun and the only way to play.
Well then, here's my question for people who feel that "lite mode" cheapens their experience: Do you completely shun normal 5-mans until you gain access to the heroic versions and then start there? If at any point you step into a normal-difficulty dungeon, people with the idea that doing a "lite mode" encounter is cheap have already made themselves a liar, really.
The easier versions of a dungeon simply exist as a mild-mannered training ground. I personally don't want "EZ-mode" raids, but faced with the choice of either never seeing content or seeing content but not getting the same rewards as the harder version, I'd prefer the latter (and not having to wait for an increase in the level cap).
XI, if that's the case, and spec/gear/consumables are what wins the fight and not the players per se, what, in the end, makes you and yours, or Nihilum, so special? If any retard with the right buttons in front of them to push with the right buffs and passive skills behind them can do anything so long as they can 'move out of the fucking fire,' what prevents guilds that have the same level of commitment to farming and gear from accomplishing the same feats as you? More than that, what allows guilds with less dedication to spec and gear and buffing to accomplish the same goals where those that put forth the same effort as you guys in terms of gear and buffing and spec fail?
The difference between the top end guilds and you is they get there with no strategy, no video, no screenshots, nothing. They have to figure it out. Their players will see a fire and instantly move out of it, and they'll tell other people fire is dangerous don't stand in it, thus the experience of one becomes the experience of all. In lower tier guilds each players must have their own experience with the fire, sometimes multiple times before they get it.
What this DOES NOT MEAN is that lower tier guilds cannot handle the fire and it must be removed, it merely means that they take more time to understand to not stand in the goddamn fire. People in this thread are advocating removing the fire because they don't feel like elevating their play level such that they can avoid or move out of the fire.
Well then, here's my question for people who feel that "lite mode" cheapens their experience: Do you completely shun normal 5-mans until you gain access to the heroic versions and then start there? If at any point you step into a normal-difficulty dungeon, people with the idea that doing a "lite mode" encounter is cheap have already made themselves a liar, really.
In a word, yes. The only normal modes I did leveling up were Ramparts and Blood Furnace because the xp/hour was excellent and avoided the camped quest mobs. The only other normal mode instances I did were for loot/rep or to help my guild members achieve the same. Quite a few of the TBC instances I've never done except on heroic mode.
Show me a raid that can't kill Kael and I'll show you a raid with bad gear choices, bad spec choices, not taking full advantage of the badge vendor, not having fully enchanted gear, not using blue gems, etc, etc. You see these are CHOICES. If you CHOOSE to spec shadowstep over combat as a rogue for example YOU ARE COSTING YOUR RAID DPS. Yes that's right, because you're too fucking cheap to respec for arena, you made the difference between getting 3 weapons down vs 4. Expand this to a raidwide level and you see how encounters can get much harder. You're the asshole who's too cheap to flask. When the raid wipes at 1% it's your fucking fault. Again, expand to the whole raid.
Notice that 0 of these things have to do with skill, they have to do with laziness and apathy. You flat out don't give a fuck about your fellow raiders, and if they don't care that you're wasting their time, why the fuck should Blizzard.
You heard it here first, folks. Throw money at raiding like it's going out of style, or die in a fire (possibly literally). If XI is happy with this state of affairs, then Blizzard must be equally pleased.
I am pretty excited about the expansion for two reasons. Firstly, new content ... 5 man, 10 man and 25 man content is a good thing. Yes, the transfer into 25 man from 5 man/heroics in TBC was sticky, but Blizzard have improved tuning, but to be truthful, Blizzard overtune encounters so that the hardcore can beat them only, then they nerf them slowly so that more and more people get access to content
Secondly - Naxxramas. I never got to see past Gluth in PreBC so that will be a nice thing, I must admit I am quite looking forward to playing at MC again on Razu adds ... that was fun. (ps you only need 2 priests to do it, and they dont need hit cap, just 4%)
Tigole (I think) said that the some encounters would need major tuning for 25man ... he cited the 4 Horsemen as the main area of concern.
So, to answer the question, I think that the standard of instance design has improved 100fold since 1.0, the horror of MC is a dim and distant memory, and one that new players never need to subject themselves to. They can learn their skills in 5 Man and 10 man content well enough to prepare them for current 25 man content.
Raiding at anything less than the bleeding edge is an exercise is following a predefined strategy, with bigwigs modules available the week after a boss is killed for the first time (and betas before that) Yeah, it takes skill (for want of a better word) to execute the more complex strategies, but it takes nothing like the same amount of patience and dedication that the cutting edge guilds need. I would love to be at a boss with no idea of what to do, but being an EU player it means that the US servers have had 2 days to look at content before we can see it, and someone *always* blabs.
You heard it here first, folks. Throw money at raiding like it's going out of style, or die in a fire (possibly literally). If XI is happy with this state of affairs, then Blizzard must be equally pleased.
I cannot believe that this is being brought up again after the 2.1 changes. Back then, this would have been a valid complaint but now with Marks giving you flasks for free and the cooking quest giving you free food buffs there's hardly any need for farming. If you're seriously complaining about the 'cost' of properly enchanting your gear, getting it socketed with rare-quality gems, or the 'cost' of not respeccing out of PVP for the PVE encounter....then yes, you won't be able to kill Vashj or Kael.
You want to speak of throwing money at things? World-first guilds don't have detailed strats and videos and flash tutorials. Everything that you take for granted while describing a boss fight took multiple wipes for these guilds to learn. I'm not saying that we should kiss the ground they walk on, but respect the fact that they have put far more money and consumables into it so that you can sit and whine about how hard the encounters are to beat.
There's not some hidden "but he tries really hard" variable built into the game. -Slake
I always love the "it doesn't fit my style of play" line. There are only two styles of play; Correct, and Incorrect. The only people that ever use this line are people with the incorrect style of play. -Sebudai
XI, if that's the case, and spec/gear/consumables are what wins the fight and not the players per se, what, in the end, makes you and yours, or Nihilum, so special? If any retard with the right buttons in front of them to push with the right buffs and passive skills behind them can do anything so long as they can 'move out of the fucking fire,' what prevents guilds that have the same level of commitment to farming and gear from accomplishing the same feats as you?
Organization, passion, a workable raid schedule. Some of the above, all of the above. The ability to analyze the game on the whole and apply that to a raid full of people willing to put in the time and effort to make themselves better is what makes a good guild. PvE is not hard on its own, PvE is hard because of the organizational aspect of it all. It's hard because it takes a lot of know how to get shit done in this game.
Nihilum is a great example. When Sunwell is released, there are many, many guilds that will be at the same gear level Nihilum is. In fact, some greater since I don't think they've seen a Warglaive drop yet, let alone a pair (side note: I just LOVE the RNG, my first born is going to be named RNG it's so awesome). Yet I'll bet dollars to doughnuts they're still the ones pushing world firsts simply because of the level of organization they have and their hardcore recruitment to assemble the exact right type of mentality to get shit done.
Every guild has Joe Badplayer, or even whole groups with Little Timmy, even the top 5. It's how they're organized and motivated, not their l33t sk1llz.
Originally Posted by Vaeflare on things you still can't do today
Way back then, you also couldn’t step up and challenge another guild on your own faction to an all-out War Game in Warsong Gulch, either, because War Games didn’t even exist until shortly after Cataclysm launched.
What this DOES NOT MEAN is that lower tier guilds cannot handle the fire and it must be removed, it merely means that they take more time to understand to not stand in the goddamn fire. People in this thread are advocating removing the fire because they don't feel like elevating their play level such that they can avoid or move out of the fire.
That is precisely what people are NOT saying.
What the semi-casual people want is a version where one person standing in the fire for more than a second doesn't mean an immediate wipe.
We all get that "Fire is bad." There are people with the skill to do these fights who just plain don't have the time to invest, and yes, that's a choice that we have made, but that's not a reason to exclude people from content that they have legitimately paid for. These people have the time to do the fights. They just don't have the time to wipe repeatedly because "somebody else" isn't quick on the uptake.
Perhaps Blizzard needs to adopt a policy similar to what Time Warner is starting to do. Raiders pay $40 a month because they use 100% of the Developers' bandwidth. Nonraiders only pay $5 a month because they don't use the content that takes the most time. (Yes, I realize this is an idiotic analogy.)
What the semi-casual people want is a version where one person standing in the fire for more than a second doesn't mean an immediate wipe.
We all get that "Fire is bad." There are people with the skill to do these fights who just plain don't have the time to invest, and yes, that's a choice that we have made, but that's not a reason to exclude people from content that they have legitimately paid for. These people have the time to do the fights. They just don't have the time to wipe repeatedly because "somebody else" isn't quick on the uptake.
Mag, Gruul, Al'ar, VR, Leo, Archimonde* all have aspects of 'fire' which you can stand in for between 2-3+ seconds in, even die and not cause a wipe.
You can CR or live with a couple of deaths if needs be, however if you all panic because one of your random DPSers or Healers died and wipe because of it... yeah no amount of numbing down will save you.
I can go and buy a 6pack of bananas, only have time to eat 4 and then complain to the store because I paid for 2 bananas I did not have time for?
What the semi-casual people want is a version where one person standing in the fire for more than a second doesn't mean an immediate wipe.
Until you get to Archimonde there are very few occurances where the failure of 1 person causes a complete and immediate wipe for the group (Solarian's bomb comes to mind as a counter example). And even Archimonde is recoverable provided there is not a chain of failure along with a soul charge.
We all get that "Fire is bad." There are people with the skill to do these fights who just plain don't have the time to invest, and yes, that's a choice that we have made, but that's not a reason to exclude people from content that they have legitimately paid for. These people have the time to do the fights. They just don't have the time to wipe repeatedly because "somebody else" isn't quick on the uptake.
No one's excluding them, except themselves. I know in this day and age it's hard to take responsibility for your own problems since everyone's a fucking victim and the man has his foot on your goddamn neck. If you have the skill, etc but are 'being held back' then maybe it's time to go join a new guild. If you don't take advantage of that choice, you made your bed, you're letting someone else shit in it, and now you have to sleep in it, enjoy.
Perhaps Blizzard needs to adopt a policy similar to what Time Warner is starting to do. Raiders pay $40 a month because they use 100% of the Developers' bandwidth. Nonraiders only pay $5 a month because they don't use the content that takes the most time. (Yes, I realize this is an idiotic analogy.)
There's more to do than a non-raiding perspective than ever before, if we actually used your analogies, casuals would pay far more than raiders. Raid content lasts a very long time, eg. people are still running the raid content that was in at expansion, how many casuals are still running 5 mans every single day/week like raiders are running SSC/Kara/etc.
What the semi-casual people want is a version where one person standing in the fire for more than a second doesn't mean an immediate wipe.
We all get that "Fire is bad." There are people with the skill to do these fights who just plain don't have the time to invest, and yes, that's a choice that we have made, but that's not a reason to exclude people from content that they have legitimately paid for. These people have the time to do the fights. They just don't have the time to wipe repeatedly because "somebody else" isn't quick on the uptake.
Perhaps Blizzard needs to adopt a policy similar to what Time Warner is starting to do. Raiders pay $40 a month because they use 100% of the Developers' bandwidth. Nonraiders only pay $5 a month because they don't use the content that takes the most time. (Yes, I realize this is an idiotic analogy.)
I don't always agree with XI's points, but yours is missing the point of WoW raiding completely. As has been said many times in many other threads, WoW is the most casual-friendly endgame in any of the large-scale MMOs to date. Instancing allows scheduling and a guild to choose what their goal is and plan raiding time accordingly. Your argument that people don't have time to watch others wipe their raid is really that individual's personal problem. You make time and prioritize accordingly: high time commitment with a hardcore guild or lower time commitment dealing with fillers that are going to wipe your raid. This is a personal choice and is not the fault of developers that you have school/job/relationship/whatever and have to balance around those things.
Rather than asking for a dumbing down of encounters, take a good lok at your goals in-game and see if they line up with your guild and the time you can commit. Do they jive? If yes, great! If no, then that player needs to adjust their desires and goals accordingly. If you have time to do the fight, then accept that you'll likely wipe, at least initially. If this frustrates you, then maybe raiding is not your best path in WoW.
I think we are getting dangerously close to turning this discussion into "hardcore vs casual" all over again. The two issues have nothing to do with each other. Discussions about the initial difficulty of raid encounters and its progression in difficulty does not assume or lead to the conclusion that things are too easy or too hard.
With that said, I would like to agree with whoever said wow raiding is currently in its best state ever. The current raids are designed with a slowly increasing level of difficulty, from heroics up to Vashj/Kael, and I really hope blizzard learns from its mistakes. Because the one thing people forget is how bad raiding was in the first months of tBC. All the people who have said "the learning curve is fine" have to remember how things were before 2.1.
Before 2.1, gruul and mag were the first 25 man raids in the game and were ridiculously hard. People were severely limited in the gear they could use, and even the early epics were so poorly designed that they were inferior to blues. There were no arena weapons/etc to be easily had, and even Kara had its very difficult bosses. Trying to kill aran mostly in blues and poorly itemized purples, with at most Moroes' epic dagger, was much harder then anything Ive encountered post kael so far. There were far fewer badge rewards, and heroics were insanely difficult. I was frequently one-shot by trash mobs in heroic instances, specially mana tombs, and people would often have to bring 2 healers along. Suffice it to say, I believe if the game had stayed that way it would have stagnated, and people would have left it a long time ago.
In the current state, I think the difficulty progression is fine up until Kael. My only problem with the current design is Kael, really, which has led Blizzard to a complicated dilemma. If you keep attunements for Hyjal/BT in place you are preventing guilds from killing bosses they would have no problems killing, but remove it and you cheapen the experience and the cost that many guilds had to go through to kill him. I think this is Blizzard's main mistake, and the one they should really learn about: dont put extremely difficult bosses immediately before cake walk bosses. If Kael was slightly easy and Najentus and Rage were much harder, there would be no issue with attunements.
Finally, I am against the whole "heroic/normal" raid. I think it detracts from the experience, and it ruins the feeling of immersion in the WOW universe "hey, its the most powerful being in outlands, put it on easy mode." And it has nothing to do with wanting to be exclusive (heck, my guild is probably 7 months behind the elite guilds, so its not even an issue). Back when I played monkey island by myself on my computer I really hated when they introduced the "easy" settings in 2 and 3. It really cheapened the whole experience, and I believe the same would apply to wow. It would make it even more about gear then it currently is, and lore would be gone forever. The upgrade in gear would either be not enough to convince people to run the heroic version, or too much, and no one would run the normal version (just as it used to be hard to get groups for heroics, and now its hard to get groups for normals).
Also, you would still have the issue of how easy is too easy. And in the end it would become just like watching a movie on youtube or something. Because, at least for me, the reason I raid is not to "see content," as in seeing skins and hearing sounds, but to experience it, as in fighting a challenging fight at the gear level the design is meant for.
So if blizzard learns from this, starts off with an easy raid that incrementally increases in difficulty to very challenging bosses, and does not throw out random cockblock bosses that prevent people from killing other very easy bosses, WOTLK will be perfect.
In the current state, I think the difficulty progression is fine up until Kael. My only problem with the current design is Kael, really, which has led Blizzard to a complicated dilemma. If you keep attunements for Hyjal/BT in place you are preventing guilds from killing bosses they would have no problems killing, but remove it and you cheapen the experience and the cost that many guilds had to go through to kill him. I think this is Blizzard's main mistake, and the one they should really learn about: dont put extremely difficult bosses immediately before cake walk bosses. If Kael was slightly easy and Najentus and Rage were much harder, there would be no issue with attunements.
Was BWL a mistake because Ebonroc and Flamegor were easier than Vael/Broodlord/Firemaw? Was Naxx a mistake because Grobbulus followed Patchwerk?
The only reason it's different now is because Blizzard caved on the original attunement and those provided people something to point at and say LOOK SEE YOU'RE COCKBLOCKING US FROM LOOT. Easier bosses come after harder bosses, straight linear progression models would lead to a much higher rate of burn and churn from the lower tier guilds when their reward for spending a week on Boss #6 was to spend 2 weeks learning Boss #7 so they could spend a month learning Boss #8, etc.
Well then, here's my question for people who feel that "lite mode" cheapens their experience: Do you completely shun normal 5-mans until you gain access to the heroic versions and then start there?
I am levelling an alt, and I guarantee it is harder then it ever was to get groups for normal instances. Even for kara attunements people are doing arc/sv/sl in heroic.
Was BWL a mistake because Ebonroc and Flamegor were easier than Vael/Broodlord/Firemaw? Was Naxx a mistake because Grobbulus followed Patchwerk?
The only reason it's different now is because Blizzard caved on the original attunement and those provided people something to point at and say LOOK SEE YOU'RE COCKBLOCKING US FROM LOOT. Easier bosses come after harder bosses, straight linear progression models would lead to a much higher rate of burn and churn from the lower tier guilds when their reward for spending a week on Boss #6 was to spend 2 weeks learning Boss #7 so they could spend a month learning Boss #8, etc.
The drop off in difficulty from Ebonroc and Flamegor was nowhere near the drop off in difficulty from Kael to Najentus/rage/supremus, etc. Guilds go from whiping on Kael for weeks to killing 8 or 9 bosses in a week. I know because that is what happened to us. There was no point in time in wow's history where the hardest boss in the game was followed by 9 of the easiest bosses in the game.
I've been in a full raid, fully flasked, with correctly spec'd people who were simply not good enough at the game to perform adequately. I'll use Vashj as an example over Kael though I'm sure the same thing applies. We had several dps who were pretty well geared and just had really bad awareness, didn't notice spawns, and just could not react fast enough to dps the adds down. They also had an issue finding the right person to throw the core to/clicking/throwing fast enough.
They were trying, and judging by the level of frustration (from them) it was beyond their skill level.
It's hard to believe that someone could be that slow, or not be 'aware' enough to make these decisions and to fix these problems, but I've seen really bad players play, in person, and while you can help them to an extent... it's a huge time investment and then you have to take into consideration their maximum skill level, which they may be at.
Then why are you putting those people on elementals? Have them sit in the center and dps striders/naga instead.
There are ways to adapt lesser skilled players in your raid, at least at the t4 and t5 level.
The drop off in difficulty from Ebonroc and Flamegor was nowhere near the drop off in difficulty from Kael to Najentus/rage/supremus, etc. Guilds go from whiping on Kael for weeks to killing 8 or 9 bosses in a week. I know because that is what happened to us. There was no point in time in wow's history where the hardest boss in the game was followed by 9 of the easiest bosses in the game.
Killing 8 or 9 bosses is more a function of having 2 zones to raid. Up to Akama in BT might be classified as easier than Kael, but is Teron really, how about Bloodboil, RoS? Not really. The same with Hyjal, is Azgalor really easier than Kael? Archimonde? So after 3 bosses in each side that are easier in terms of difficulty you're right back to being expected to play at a moderately high level of competency.
Show me a raid that can't kill Kael and I'll show you a raid with bad gear choices, bad spec choices, not taking full advantage of the badge vendor, not having fully enchanted gear, not using blue gems, etc, etc. You see these are CHOICES. If you CHOOSE to spec shadowstep over combat as a rogue for example YOU ARE COSTING YOUR RAID DPS. Yes that's right, because you're too fucking cheap to respec for arena, you made the difference between getting 3 weapons down vs 4. Expand this to a raidwide level and you see how encounters can get much harder. You're the asshole who's too cheap to flask. When the raid wipes at 1% it's your fucking fault. Again, expand to the whole raid.
Notice that 0 of these things have to do with skill, they have to do with laziness and apathy. You flat out don't give a fuck about your fellow raiders, and if they don't care that you're wasting their time, why the fuck should Blizzard.
Sometimes, choices are about the players, not the characters, XI.
I've got players in my guild that are 40-somethings with wives and kids - doctors, even. Their competency in these kinds of games tends to be significantly lower than ours, because we come from an era that has had much more exposure to them - our familiarity with them is our strength, not our gem selection.
For guilds on the real bleeding edge, like your own, you can choose to let players that don't push themselves to the theoretical limitations of their class go - for many, that's not a choice. My sister plays WoW - she's quite good, but if she wasn't, I wouldn't kick her from my guild. That human element dictates a lot of what happens in an average (even an average top-tier) guild.
Some of these groups can't kill Illidan, some can't kill Kael, some can't kill Magtheridon. I sincerely doubt that every single incomplete encounter can be causally linked to gem selection and bad talent choices.
02/08/08, 10:55 AM
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