• goss

Using any form of employment as an analogy for raiding is tremendously flawed. Guilds are (more) akin to a college or serious amateurs sports team. A hobby that some will take seriously and competitively - and expect that it will be managed in such a way as to not waste their time/effort. That analogy scales down too, as people play sports/team hobbies at all levels of skill - just as they play WoW/MMO's. So XI's description of choice is perfectly valid, you can choose to have fun and play tennis with your family as a pastime, and never improve, or you can join a league and see your skills grow. But you probably can't do both simultaneously.

 

XI-

You learn these things in Karazhan. How to be prepared, how to bring pots, how to analyze an encounter based on you group composition. I also find it funny how you quoted my figure of 10%. Did you miss the sentence following it that said ~45% of the people are involved in T5 content. These people have a realistic chance of finishing the game before the expansion comes, especially with S3 moving to non-rating required, the advent of S4 gear, the likely inevitability of T6 caliber badge loot complete invalidating T5 content, etc. The curve progresses in a nearly completely linear fashion. Easy at the front and harder at the back for each tier of content.

You're right this game isn't a job. Which is why I dislike people wasting my free time. I put up with it in my job because I'm getting paid for it, I do not put up with it in WoW because I have no need of that. The fact remains if your goal is to raid and you are hamstringing yourself with personal choices based on friendship and likeability there still exists plenty of content for you to experience that is NEW TO YOU. Just because it is not new to majority of people, or give amazing loot really shouldn't change YOUR experience, because as you just told me, you're not that kind of player right?

 

• songster

Pretty much exactly it. The learning curve was nigh-on perfect. The gearing / attunement curve shattered social structures by not letting you just level up to the cap and get cracking. I hope they keep the learning curve pretty much exactly as-is in WoTLK.

 

Buiden

There's absolutely no reason Xi's hardcore raiding world and Joe Casual's raiding worlds can't coexist. A few things that I think would help are:

1. Make raid zones overlap so that the less hardcore can see the entry level bosses, architecture, get a feel for the zone, even though they might not complete it. The entry level bosses should be easier than the previous Tier. I think BWL to AQ40 modeled this perfectly.

2. Make an entry level raiding zone, whether the hardcore want to admit it or not, we too need time to gear up, and learn how raiding works at the new level cap. When we first reached level 70, so much was different about the raiding environment that it took a little bit of time to adjust, an entry level raid zone is perfect for this.

3. Don't make entry level raiding for 10-man only and make it a zone with quite a few bosses. Gruul was a terrible entry raid due to too few encounters, likewise Karazhan was a great place to gear up but you couldn't get a grasp on how 25 mans would work with only 10 people. Combine the gearing aspect and number of bosses in karazhan with 25 people and you will be set.

4. Make the end bosses difficult, but give ample means to outgear them so that the hardcore can beat them quickly and the less hardcore can eventually outgear the fight and beat it as well.

5. Acheive stratification through gear checks and difficulty rather than attunements when possible, this means that people will actually have to be getting upgrades to beat the harder encounters. A system where people in Karazhan (entry level) gear could kill the hardest boss in the game is piss poor design.

 

Plainstalker

Listen to what you're saying. I take issue with this for a number of reasons. Calling for a nerf of raid content is fine when it is justified. The first incarnation of Vashj or C'thun for instance which were practically unkillable come to mind immediately. But a fight requiring someone to be able to play the game well in order for you to defeat the encounter is not an unreasonable requirement, at all. Why should content be dumbed down for people who simply aren't good players? There is no experience in life that works that way, let alone in the world of video games. If you're not a good player, why should you have access to and the ability to conquer the most difficult aspect of the game and the rewards that go along with it?

If anything Blizzard has been relatively lax until recently with allowing access to weapons and gear with only time expenditure as the primary barrier and if you wait long enough most of the raid encounters are going to decrease in difficulty anyway.

To relate it to other facets of WoW, if you aren't good enough to earn a 2k rating, you're not going to be wearing S3 shoulders. If you can't break 1850 you won't be sporting S3 weapons. If you don't know how to move your character out of harmful looking spell effects and press the right buttons, you don't get to walk around Shattrath with epic gear. The fallacy of the logic of "If it's not ez-mode, we won't get shiny new stuff and see more content" is easily spotted here.

 

◊ Anias

I've taken a wide variety of random strangers through large parts of the game at this point. TBC's large change from retail was that you must tell people now that they are bad. You cannot simply ignore it, you must actively correct for it. That said - I know for a fact we've attuned some people for t6 that have no business going to it (gear/play) so it can be done even with this mythical "terrible" person in the group.


Stay out of the fire and for the love of god aoe if it will hit three mobs. I wouldn't agree that TBC raiding is "easy"; I'd instead say that TBC raiding mechanics are simpler/more visible.

Now then to the thread - Difficulty is a good thing. You play checkers/chess/scrabble/go because they are difficult. If both players won simply by sitting down it would be less interesting. A part of what makes the experience worthwhile is the act of accomplishment balanced by the risk of failure. If you just want to watch digital elves/skeletons/cows beat up on something, well the cartoon network is available.

I prefer a varied difficulty curve - easy easy hard easy easy hard easy hard is better than easy easy easy easy easy hard hard hard. Even if you might get further faster with the first setup, you're far more likely to not have fun with the harder bosses if they're piled on top of each other. That said, I'd love the option to go hit up an instance off the main progression path for Hard Mode all the time. Being able to zone into an instance just to hit the last fight in it when you have moved past it is something to consider.

I think a lot of people overlook this, but leading a group of essentially strangers in a virtual world is actually very hard to do and a large majority of existing guilds simply fail at this. It's hard to find people. It's hard to motivate them. It's hard to get them to follow you. So I approve of making the curve a little choppy to offer incentives for morale. I see that as something of a bone thrown to the raid leaders of the world. There's a fair number of "bosses" that are glorified treasure chests behind the 'hard' boss. (Grobbulous springs to mind, as does rage). I appreciate this.

I also think that having an essentially "throw away" same sized dungeon/raid experience is valuable. It provides a place for people to get used to seeing some number of people all doing the same thing. So I think we definitely needed a 25 man raid zone that was around naxx size at the start of the expansion. In fact, with hindsight, I think the 25 man raid game would have been happier at release (given the attunement situation) had there been a strict requirement to have an atiesh or some such to get into kara. Assuming that the associated attunement could be guild-lifted once your guild got past it x times, it would have been a better fit for a new 70 to go to naxx than to gruul 1.0. (I'm ignoring the 40-->25-->10 numbers and the associated pain on guild organizers, as I've commented on it elsewhere). The difficulty and layout of naxx at 70 is about right for "teaching a group of 25+ what they need to know", and I think it would have worked beautifully as an introductory zone for the 70 content if they'd simplly given you a reason to go (maybe even a 3.5 quest series for each class).

The other aspect I think is worth remembering is the idea of "winged" progression. It's very discouraging for a guild to be required to kill boss x to move on. Even having "harder than boss x" boss y as an alternative helps repair morale, and morale is by far the biggest factor in the average kill. High raid-group morale has more people online, prepared and playing better. So having a full stop based on one fight is really damaging.

I think the lessons to take away from this expansion with regards to raiding and the associated difficulty curve can be summarized accordingly:

People like larger raid instances that feel cohesive - 1 shot "dragon in her cave" events need to be tied to a specific piece of crunchy lore, most dungeons should be of the organic karazhan/naxx model so that groups can become cohesive.

People like winged progression and the associated feeling of "making choices" - lots of guilds skipped netherspite, or nightbane, or maiden etc in karazhan and felt the zone was a better fit as a result. The bakery and basement add atmosphere. This allows groups to do something different rather than just wipe endlessly if they hit a block.

Varied difficulty is a good thing - wiping for weeks to a hard boss to just run into another hard boss is damaging to the avg guild, and should be avoided if possible. Loot pinatas as a reward for finally getting past hard boss x are a great salv to group morale.

The avg raid night should be a slight profit to the participants, even if they wipe and wipe and wipe. Waking up the next morning down 400 gold in consumables and repairs is bad. Waking up the next morning with 11g in profit even though you died alot, is quite a bit less painful. Even if you missed out on a potential 800g profit from farming instead of wiping.

I'm sure there's more, but those are the ones that stick out at me at the moment.

 

Galred

The main thing that I felt was missing from TBC launch was a 'gearing' instance for your 25-man raid force, instead of horribly splitting your 30+ raiders into two or more Karazhan runs with attendant drama.

So, for WotLK, we've got Naxx 2.0 with a wing and a half of 25-man content for Xi's 'mouth breathers'. I say, great! Let guilds learn to raid as a team at the instance size they desire - sure, many players may be terrible but I'd bet there are some who can turn into serious raiders if they could simply experience a taste of success.

Having both 10-man progression and 25-man progession sounds good to me, if done well. As long as there are some upgrades in 10-mans for the 25-man raiders, it should be a ton of content that leads to fun evenings of boss killing and gear upgrades. (ZA is a bit like this now - most raiders I know wanted at least one item from there, plus the timed event rings and endboss trinkets.)

The counter-argument here on EJ would be that Blizzard should spend more time on high-end 25-man content. At this point I just don't see Blizz abandoning 10-mans, they're too successful. What I am hoping is that we'll get a saner set of dungeon launches and initial tuning that doesn't suck.

 

XI-

Ironically enough this argument has never been presented here that I can recall. People have argued about the placement of smaller content, Risk vs Reward, etc, etc, but never has the argument been presented that Blizzard is 'wasting' their time on X and said time should be devoted to 25man content. The inverse of course is presented every day here.

 

◊ Anias

I think they should have a slightly more cohesive vision for the progression of a group of (say) 5 friends through their 5, 10, 25, man game on both the pve and pvp side, but that's hardly "wasted time". I suppose if someone quoted me out of context that you could maybe make one of those posts into "blizzard devs waste time".

I think one of the things we do mention several times on these boards is that there should be a definite and real reason for content, even content we don't see. Perhaps that was the argument that was taken as "spend more time"? I don't recall anyone making the case that blizzard should (for instance) abandon developement of the sunwell 5 man to add another 2 bosses to the 25 man. I think we've mostly just hoped that the sunwell 5 man was a cut above the existing 5 mans so that it would be interesting to the crowd of "I've cleared shattered halls 4000 times" people who are really looking forward to a new 5 man.

 

Griswolde

Here's the thing: should there ever be an encounter where one person messing up means a wipe? That's what C'thun was like at the appropriate gear level. One person chains a green beam and all of sudden you're missing 5 people and you won't be able to kill him. I don't think encounters should be that hard. What encounters like that do is force every single person in your raid to at least be competent. For top level guilds, that's not much of an issue, but has anyone here actually tried recruiting for a mid tier guild? If you want to have enough people to raid, you are absolutely forced to recruit below average people.

The suggestions in this thread all boil down to:

1.) Don't recruit bad players. See above. This is simply impossible if you aren't already a top guild.
2.) Join a guild that already has better players. This is basically what we have now. Mid level guilds are feeder guilds for the top ones. I can't see why anyone thinks this situation is ideal.

 

Galred

Caught by Xi! Must have been a flashback to the WoW forums.

What I probably should have typed is that there currently exists "Intro to Raiding" content, even though the drops aren't valuable anymore, and whether it's a valid theory to expect players new to raiding to simply hit up MC.

Has anyone had success in getting new raiders to hit the old raid zones in order to practice teamwork? Aside from the occasional ZG run for mounts/head enchants I haven't seen raids for MC/BWL/etc. get off the ground.

EDIT: Drank some coffee, tried to asemble coherency.

 

Nezralix

It's a pointless effort. The stamina change, the level disparity mechanics, and even the additional 60->70 skills make it all too far from reality to bother with. Sure, occasionally players will learn a thing or two about unconventional mechanics, but without the lingering threat of death, you might as well be doing heroics.

 

vorda

I've heard of a guild going back to AQ20 to do some stuff like MA, pulling, raid healing, etc. But it was an isolated case, and pretty much wasted time imo.

Heroics/5 mans combined with just glancing over bosskillers prepare you more then enough for Kara. After that -excluding the pain the pre nerf magtheridon was- its a more then decent learning curve imo.

 

Valerian

This is pretty much the point I was making before. There are bad people at this game. As such sweeping statements of "its easy" are not accurate because for the huge number of moutbreathers out there it is NOT easy. I'm not asking for nerfs or whatever. Its not like being a bad player is unfixable unless you have incredibly bad reflexes and just can't get them any better. You don't need to be a god to get through the end game content. But when I hear "its easy" it tends to imply to me that any joe should be able to casually get through this content which just isn't the case.

 

bortson

Speaking as a mouth breather, I think there is really only one problem with the difficulty curve in TBC and it's that so much of the "difficulty" is really just "gear check."

For the 25 mans, my guild's progression was:

--Finally get enough together to run a 25 man. Maulgar died that night. Why? Because it's a fight where if you can follow directions you will win.

--Over a month later, Gruul dies. For the most part, we weren't being too badly affected by shatters after the first night, we simply didn't have the dps to kill him before he started one shotting tanks.

--Lurker died pretty quickly in terms of number of attempts before we got it. However, it took us over 20 minutes the first time he died. Why? Because it's a fight where if you can follow directions you will win.

--Once again, about a month later, loot reaver dies. People weren't pulling aggro, giant bubbles weren't really a problem, he just got really angry after awhile of us hitting him with fluffy pillows and wiped us.

We seem to have finally hit the 25 man gear inflection point or whatever and now, for each of the last 4 weeks we've killed a new boss every week. (Hey, for mouth breathers, that ain't too bad!) We're certainly happy with the way things are going, given the amount we raid. Who knows? We might even see the inside of BT before WotLK.

I guess I just don't see the logic behind enrage timers. Learning fights and modifying strategy is fun, being cockblocked on what are basically tank and spank fights because you can't spank 1000 times every second is not. I understand that new 70s in greens shouldn't be able to waltz into BT and kill Illidan just by boring him to death for 3 hours, but from my vantage point it seems that, especially in the early 25 man content, there's too much "well, d'ya have the gear or donchya?"

 

• Whiteknight

One of my guild members runs an incredibly popular weekly Naxxramas raid. Surprisingly some of the KT and Sapph loot is still even useful. Folk are using the undead AP trink in hyjal and some of the shoulder enchants are quite decent.

More on topic with the main thread, I think I'd like to see more work in line with rewarding folk for doing the encounters better rather than simply killing the boss. Something similar to the ZA timed run or the BWL time-limit quest for the red shard. Kill these hard bosses (and some easy ones) for a reward, or kill them more efficiently, faster, better for a better reward. I think there's a lot of scope to keep the truly hardcore interested beyond just killing the bosses.

Extending the 'daily' quest idea to repeatable dungeon quests for consumables/cash or other rewards would be cool too. E.g. Kill illidan in less than 15min first try for some nifty reward - expanded loot table, consumables, extra gold or just some vanity item - doesn't really matter.

 

Buiden

That is actually 3-4 people messing up.

I agree with your point however, 1 person messing up should always be recoverable and they for the most part have done a pretty good job with that.

 

XI-

5 people dying to moron beam is perfectly recoverable, we had plenty of people who were very fond of distributing hugs, or loved dpsing a little too much, take your pick. Below average people to what? If you are a T5 guild, you obviously will not get the same quality of players as a T6 guild. Which presents you with a choice, are you skilled enough to be a T6 player, and have the desire to play that way, if so app. If not be satisfied as a T5 caliber player recruiting players of similar caliber.

We used to run Naxx pretty frequently as a pug, bringing in more guild ringers for 4h, etc. They do a 10man BWL for gold sometimes on the weekends, that's gotten a Rejuv gem 4/5 runs. Semi-related to your question, when we re-introduced T5 into our raiding schedule we found the quality and speeds of our T6 raids drastically improved.

Easy means that anyone with a reasonable amount of effort should be able to demonstrate the skills necessary to beat the content. This is true about every single encounter currently in the game.

Becuase then it brings you back to the Molten Core model of stacking tons of healers and just outlasting the boss. Enrage timers are there to ensure that your dps are trying just as hard as your tanks and healers.