Metrosexuelf

I don't think much productive will come from this thread but, honestly, I don't see that many raiders at the very top of the curve concerned about (you used top 20 or so as a cutoff for special drops/titles) casual players 'catching up.' When it is all said and done and the next expansion goes live the top raiders will still have better gear because nothing will match Sunwell loot.

As far as challenge goes, every high end raider realizes -- or shoud realize by now -- they are the true beta testers of World of Warcraft. Sure, Blizzard has a de jure QA department but from all indications they are either horrible or barely test things before spitting it out to the de facto QA department: the top raiders. That's the nature of the beast. You play at the top of the curve you shouldn't expect to face refined encounters... at least not when you insist on copying to the PTR and playing through said content.

I also think it is pretty fallacious to say raiders want 'few as possible spoilers.' Why do you think websites like MMO-Champion and WorldofRaids are so popular? People want spoilers and advance information. Certainly there are a few guilds that want to learn encounters on their own but I would be shocked if the vast majority of even the top guilds aren't watching videos and/or discussing Sunwell boss strategies on IRC or Vent.

I recognize that some people are desperate to distinguish their characters from the millions of other people that play but outside of titles and a few novelty items there aren't too many ways for Blizzard to accomplish this without making the entry into their game prohibitive to new players.

 

Shadout

Wanting info isnt the same as using info.
Now that we do have information flowing freely, I assume too that nearly all guilds use this information, because, if they dont, they will be set back in the competition compared to those who use the information.
Still, it doesnt mean they wouldnt have preferred the information not to be there at all.

For the people saying they dont want to get watered dow bosses when they get to the content 6 months later, while I understand why you dont want it so, thats surely how it is already and has always been. Dont expect it to change.
Those who want the unnerfed content, probably just have to speed up. and the nerfing of old content is a way for them to do so. Its not exactly like content is right away, most people who are serious about raiding will have time to experience the non-nerfed content (excluding the unkillable versions of some TBC bosses, they are hardly relevant).
I simply dont believe different raid modes (easy, heroic, etc) will be feasible. It would take way too much work from Blizz.
And even if possible, splitting up the raider base even more might be quite a terrible idea, both for the competition, but also for guilds breaking up when they cant agree which ones they want to raid

Having SSCEasy guild lf members, SSCnormal guild looking for members etc, could end up being rather fucked tbh.

For the majority of the WoW playerbase I would argue the current "nerf the old raid instances each patch" is the best solution. Sure the how's and when's of these nerfs can improve, but the strategy itself seems fine.
The main issue really is, how to improve stuff for the people in the the other end of th spectrum: The best raiders. Right now, sure they are rewarded with the joy of killing a boss before others, but there could certainly be more rewards to make the competition more interesting. And not just for the first kill competition, but adding unto it, and thus fixing on of the main-issues for bleeding egde raiding: Running out of content.
Rewards for fast kills and all the stuff mentioned already, is really a way to accomplish this, whereas making different modes of raid instances isnt really benefiting either ends of the spectrum.

 

Amathal

I agree with some of what you said, but I think I disagree in how you have the "easy" and "hard" modes laid out.

Hard mode I envision as simply being what the game was at release. Gruul pre nerfs, Magtheridon pre nerfs, SSC pre nefts, ect. This is the "difficulty" that progressing guild would want to go for to get the best loot and the reputation as being one of the best guilds around.

Easy mode would be, well, easier. The loot would have to be a much lower level, as I see easy mode (ha, funny to say that) being just a way for the "masses" to see the content. Tune easy T5 and T6 content to drop slightly higher than Karazhan gear, and be just above Karazhan difficulty. This form would have to come out much later, for example, after x number of guilds have killed Vashj (worldwide?), easy difficulty SSC opens up with some sort of small attunement (Kill Warlord Kalithresh on Heroic for SSC, kill Harbringer Skyriss on Heroic for TK, something like that). This would prevent guilds from just doing it on easy from the start to see the content and quiting. You could go as far to say push this difficulty until near the release of an expansion. For example, before WotLK comes out, make easy difficulties so people can at least experience the content before everyone rushes to 80 and nobody ever goes back.

The reason I would suggest this is because you still get the competition to be best, but those that cannot be in a hardcore guild (also known as good guilds) can still see the content. Much like killing Shade of Aran today is no big deal, neither would killing Shade of Akama on easy difficulty. This is appealing to me because I know that I will never be able to kill Illidan as the game is set up right now. My play time is simply too erratic from school and other outside obligations, so I end up playing multiple characters. None of the guilds in Black Temple on my server want a warrior in almost all blues, as surprising as that sounds :P

 

Shadout

Amathal, the way you set yours modes up, it would just screw over the huge segment of raiders in between bleeding edge and those who want Karazhan difficulty

I bet most raiders dont want SSC pre-nerf (tbh, I bet most of the bleeding edge raiders dont even want that, most people just seems to want forgetting SSC entirely!), the majority of the dedicated raiders simply want challenging bosses they can do without being the "top 100" in the world. (Which is why the whole casual vs. hardcore dichotomy is, as always, damn silly and useless)

That said, those who want to be the top 100, should also feel they get something out of being so. Not necessarily "higher ilvl purples!", just something.

 

Esajin

Throwing an idea into the pool:

What about letting the raid leader decide about the instance reset timer? One issue I remember some casual guilds have is that they would raid only a couple times per week, and as such would hardly ever be able to hit on the later bosses of a given instance because of the reset timer.

Being able to double or triple the instance reset timer (say, from one to three weeks) for a raid leader would solve that problem, without that much of an influence over the higher end guilds. And I'm not afraid to say that this benefits those who are willing to put efforts into raiding, but just miss the little something that allow them to beat a raid dungeon within a single night.

Here would be the raid instance difficulty:
0: heroic - 1 week reset, and the instance becomes locked out after 24 hours. Also toggles "mount/vanity loot" on along with quests for special titles/rewards
1: hard - 1 week reset
2: "normal" - 2 weeks reset
3: "easy" - 3 weeks reset

People would be saved for one week, except the raid leader who would be able to invite people back to his instance for as long as 3 weeks.
Progression through content would be less effort-consuming, at the cost of less loot overall (due to the instance not resetting every week), rather than nerfed battles.

 

frber

At least for me I'd like raids just for large group content can be fun; and is a nice social thing in a guild. However I don't want to schedule play time in advance. I also really don't want to have to go back and do the same instance over and over again. At least for me much of the issue with raiding is that its designed to take a consistent group; so you are either part of a group that raids the same instance over and over again a few times/week for months; or you don't go see it at all.

I'd really prefer raids to be just like the heroic instances in difficulty. And just complex enough to be a little challenging but it should be possible to clear it on the first night with a decent PuG (after repeted wipes maybe and many hours maybe). Sure that kind of game preference wont mix with people who want to play the game for a challenge or whatever; and perhaps the solution would be to not try and mix things at all?

Create different server types would be one idea. Making casual servers that only have the easier content. Everything PuG'able, and people can just play for fun. Of course no reason for PuG raids to have that much better gear than PuG heroics so they could very well cut out the gear grind aspects of WoW on a more casual server.

Then make a different type of server for the more hardcore and take the raids and add loads of extra trash for the time sink aspect; and more abilities to the bosses perhaps. So its more challenging. Would of course need to put the server types in different Battle groups so there wouldn't be gear spillover into Arena/BGs but would be doable likely.

Don't really see the downsides of making different server types at all. Would open up for Blizzard to differentiate the monthly fee as well and offer more content on the hardcore servers in exchange for a higher fee.

Oh and I don't think it would be an issue with running out of content on a more casual server wih PuG raids. Its still good fun to PuG the Heroics even if having done them before. As long as there are many to chose from so no need to go to the same one repetedly it stays fun as well.

 

Hildegard

Forget about casual/hardcore
You cannot easily split the whole playerbase into two groups. And separating the server won't do any good. If you can see content completly in easy mode or even with cheats - that content is burned. It should remain a privilege of these top raiders to see the content first.

But seriously - if we want to keep the discussion in this thread stop playing along the casual/hardcore thing too much. They are the two very ends of a wide spectrum, that has no sharp borders, if there are any at all. I know I used the term in the header, but I also stated that we should keep away from the usual stereotypes.

Problem: Quality of the instance on release
Competition among raiders would already start on the PTR, which is kind of odd. How could this competition work if character copies have different durations or encounters come out unpolished. Perhabs Blizzard is not capable of starting the competition as it would require fine tuned instances on release.

For Gnomewind ! For the queens Liraxxa, Dilia and Thalsia !

 

• Astiron

I have never been on the cutting edge, or for that matter the same damn sword, as the raid crowd. And I agree with this. This is one of the things I think Blizz did get right in vanilla. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I could be), but most raid dungeons were mostly just tuned, not nerfed down for casuals. I think it is also correct to say that most of these places didn't need nerfing, because the pacing of their release allowed even the most casual the opportunity to finish the dungeon in it's current form. Nerfs were not needed, except for tuning.

I have found this to be more the case in guilds I've been in the past. All were very casual, and this definitely is what the guild demographic was. We needed twice as many players in the roster to do any given raid dungeon consistently.

Likewise, I don't see the problem with Blizz implementing two paths of progression, which it seems they might be considering already with 10-mans. I don't see why this would not be feasible. Everyone gets their cake, and there is always the option for a greater challenge. Then again, this is part of the current design philosophy, and where Blizz seems to get hung up the most is trying to balance around all these playstyles (hi Arena), and the actual reward for playing starts to become too watered down.

Hardcore is easier to define. I'd say there is a Hardcore crowd and an Other-than-hardcore crowd. Casual just means too many things, whereas hardcore is generally accepted as players who like difficult content and spend more time to consume it.

There is no study to prove it, but I'd wager many of the people who frequent those sites are folks like me who have no chance of ever seeing that content live. And we like to see whats next for the top raiders.

As for why raiders visit ...they are players like everyone else. Suspense is exciting, anticipation. I do not think they visit so they can have the strategy ready for live, though some certainly do. This was illustrated back in vanilla on numerous accounts, where at the top tier you didn't post strategies until the top guilds were done with the content. I site 4-horsemen as one such example. That sort of thing probably still exists at the very top, who knows. But let us not assume that everyone wants spoilers. They just like anticipating new content. There is a difference.

 

dakalro

Totally agree here. At the start I was pretty much on the pvp welfare, casual nerfs, "wtf!!121 why are they letting everyone have ..." bandwagon but realized it's actually good, most people that raid in an organized fashion will get to see more of the content and at some point when RNG will be very bad to me even I might profit from it. Would just like to get my title for killing stuff, not for getting attuned to it. In the end it's not the loot itself that matters but what it signifies, that you beat the game. And PvP-ers already have it and after that you'll only see fewer people arguing anything about so called welfare system cause they keep their recongnition.

 

Braque

Blessed Medallion of Karabor is awesome. Free teleport to outlands on a 15m cooldown? Don't underestimate it.

 

Shadout

If Blizz just pulled their acts together and implemented Houses they would have such an easy way to allow players to show their accomplishments. Imagine hanging [Head of Brutallus] on your wall or something (Only dropping for the 20 first guilds or similar, and if they didnt want to totally screw over others, he could drop something else for everyone else killing him later),

Despite SWG's many faults, it could often be awesome to visit other players houses and see all the obscure stuff they had collected.

 

dakalro

Well, it's the visible stuff that matters (item looks/stats/titles/mounts) most after killing bosses, that's probably why there was an outcry against looks on arena gear at first and now gear quality. Give us titles and normal (but different) mounts and there's still something remaining that makes us look "special" (hah, take that anyway you like :P).

True, a free HS with pretty much no CD is infinitely more useful then let's say a 100% mount but I've never been asked what's that spell you're casting while T6 and Bear Mount and earlier even Champion of the Naaru gets a lot of fans (and ridicule sometimes while doing BGs but nothing better than 1-2shotting someone once in a while, not like I can kill anything in pve gear + spec face to face :P).

So ultimately if I am not to remain with the "uber" gear since I'll prolly be able to buy every t6 badge reward I want on my alt when it shows up and jump from t4-t5 gear to t5+ gear in 1 day (one of the reasons I got over the whole gear for casuals is that my alt has managed to spend hundreds of badges on decent gear and while my guild doesn't really run ZA regularly, let alone alt-ZA I can easilly MT/OT/DPS and even heal in other guild's runs and most of the time do 2-3 chests simply due to badge gear).

 

• Sirloin

Here are my suggestions for Heroic/Normal raids:


Length and Difficulty:
The normal raids would be tuned easier, and would have fewer bosses (An easier BT could omit mother/council/illdian or even more like gurtogg+ros omitted). Trash would be on a longer respawn or might not respawn at all. Some trash packs might be omitted.

Loot:
All loot would be "mirrored" between normal and heroic with the same distribution of stats, but at a lower ilevel, like 5-10 levels. This would make it easier on the itemization team and assure that heroic raiders would have no reason to raid the normal mode instance for some item that was somehow better itemized than a heroic slot.

Lockout:
The instances would share a lockout, so you had to pick normal or heroic mode each week; you can't raid both.

Attunement:
To attune for the Heroic raid you need to EITHER complete an attunement from the previous tier (like the system we have now), OR complete the Normal mode of the same tier.



Here's an example for "normal mode" BT, assuming the current BT is "heroic":
1. No attunement needed for normal mode.
2. Bosses in normal mode: Najentus, Supremus, Shade, Teron, Gurtogg. RoS just isn't there, and the door to Mother never opens.
3. Trash respawns only on a soft-reset, and the density of the trash is reduced.
4. The bosses are tuned easier, but with the same mechancs: Naj burst hits for less, heals for less while the shield is up. Supremus hits weaker, volcanos hit for less. Shade would be the same, or maybe omit rogues from the side packs. Gorefiend would hit weaker, and only 3 constructs would spawn per ghost, or hit for a lot less if they make it to the raid. Gurtogg overall damage just reduced, with weaker dots, more time between bloodboils (3 per phase instead of 5), and a similar if slightly more forgiving P2.
5. Loot tables are the same, but the items that drop are just ilevel 136, and all stats are scaled down accordingly.
6. There is an quest to kill Teron and Gurtogg which attunes the player for Heroic BT.

My Steam Profile (Aether) Cherish the difference between 58° and 59°.

 

Zifna

I like this idea. It'd allow a guild to raid as little as 2 days a week and still have a good shot at seeing all the content in the game. Raiding's fun and all but I think a lot more people would get into it if it was something that they could be competitive in with only 2-3 evenings lost per week instead of 5 or more.

The other nice thing about this method is there'd be no need to itemize all different loot or differentiate between what people had done... anyone who had gotten a kill would have defeated the exact same encounter.

 

Tojara

If you were to do this I wouldn't change the encounters one bit. Keep them the same and keep the rewards the same.

While this wouldn't let a massive amount of guilds experience content you would definetely witness a few guilds using such a feature if it was ever implemented. A minimum of one week reset and a maximum of a two week reset (for those who choose to so) would help those guilds struggling to find time to fit these encounters into their schedule.

Anyways, theres lots of things they can do to make raiding a little bit more competitive amongst top guilds then there is now. The game must move on and I think its only right to progressively make the content easier so that more and more people can see the content that blizzard has made for them. I think its reward enough to see the content months and months before others, as well as being a Tier or two above the general population.

 

Onomatopeizator

Let's put it this way: I'm on Kael atm. I still have a chance, remote or not, to see Kil'jaeden. I have absolutely zero chance to see Kael v1, old Solarian and a few others.
A few people have already said it in this thread, but I'll repeat: nerfing bosses screws over people that have started raiding later, can't find a good guild with raiding times that suit them, etc., and still want to see as much content as they can. The nerfs are not new and I've come to terms with not seeing the v1 of most bosses - but sometimes, they are going too far. Take Solarian, who was basically replaced by a body double. Take Magtheridon, if all the rumored changes are true.

About the changes: Removing trash and adding shortcuts to final bosses is a good idea. I've seen a few guilds that raid 2-4 times a week and/or have a large roster, and don't have enough training time on the end bosses to progress(my current guild, for one). That could be remedied by being more efficient, but many people treat farm content as some sort of holiday, and motivating them to clear it faster is harder than getting them to do good on new bosses.
Second, more 10-man content! Organizing 25-man raids is a big problem with truly casual people (those that can raid one week, but not at all the other), since the amount of people turning up for raids will vary greatly. And "friends&family" guilds don't really reach a size that would allow them to go Gruul.

Ending, people already said, the "casual" (and to a lesser extent "hardcore") pretty much means different things to each of us. So instead of saying what this/that group wants, please just say what -you- want.

Added: In the "Tabula Raider" thread iirc, it was suggested that a spectator mode would be fun to have for raids. Something like that would go a long way to pleasing people that want to see all content because they are lore freaks, but don't care for raiding at all.

 

Eulolia

Trash is everything, in my opinion.

When you look at the TBC raid instances, pretty much the only one that has achieved mainstream success is Karazhan. I did a /who mage karazhan last week and got 40 results. I have no idea what the average number of mages in a Karazhan raid actually is, but assuming it's somewhere near 1.0, that's 40 raids running Karazhan. At the same time, there were 3 guilds in ZA, three in Tempest Keep and none at all in SSC, BT or Hyjal. It seems that at the end of tier 4 content, which is mostly 10man bosses, progression just completely dies.

The content after this point has been nerfed quite a few times, but it seems like a majority of people just aren't interested. It can be hard to pinpoint why. The first thing said is usually "the gear there isn't worth the effort compared to badge/pvp gear", which may be true but that wouldn't explain why Karazhan is so popular, as the gear there is even worse. The raid size isn't a huge issue either when you consider all entry-level guilds that would field 40 man raids pre-BC.

Anyway, trash is everything. Trash is the first impression any guild gets of a new instance. When the AQ gates opened, you had hundreds of people outside and dozens of guilds forming raids outside there. A quick wipe on the first patrol or anubisath pack in aq40, and people realised they should probably clear BWL first and then come back.

TK and SSC trash is pretty mean. It's harder than Black Temple trash in many places. And it respawns after 2 hours, which is something pretty new in TBC (I know core hounds and such respawned, but we're talking full trash clears here, to pretty much every boss). I don't really see a reason in this at all. Understandably it was to stop the top guilds from progressing too fast, by limiting their boss attempts, but now those guilds are miles ahead it shouldn't need to act as a block at all. Going back to Karazhan, Karazhan has nice short and relaxed trash clears (except maybe the 2 rooms after Curator), which is really what SSC and TK should be like since they're low-level 25mans.

Which brings me to the subject topic - nerfing bosses is bad. Bad bad bad. Everyone loses when you nerf a boss - the people who killed it originally feel like their accomplishments have been taken away, and the people who are coming to up it aren't generally happy about it either, and get grief rather than congratulations from the more-progressed guilds. What should be toned up and down is the secondary factors that make them harder to learn, especially trash, but also wipe recovery, easier-to-get resistance gear, attunements (the whole "get attuned on hard boss to access some easy bosses" thing is a terrible idea) etc.

Boss health/length is also an issue. Most would call changing it a Primary nerf, but it really depends how you balance it out. Generally, the bosses in tier 5 zones are long fights. You suddenly go from Karazhan bosses that die in 5 minutes with average DPS to 10+ minute fights like Magtheridon, Al'Ar, Morogrim etc. The shortest fight is probably Astromancer, and that can still take a guild 6-7 minutes. Pre-BC that would be considered a long fight for any guild before.. Chromaggus? Short fights tend to be way more accessible, anyway.

 

thelastrace

Looking at the different modes per raid zone seems like it would never work. This would have to be done at the launch of an expansion and not in the middle of one. Item levels are fairly close together as you progress from Kara all the way into Sunwell. The nightmare for Blizzard of adding completely new loot tables to every raid (if not 2 new tables as some have suggested). Itemization is not as easy as everyone makes it out to be. Item stats are constantly getting nerfed and buffed for this reason. It is very tough to balance item