I like the idea very much overal.

One problem i see is the learning-rate of the small-size dungeons: If we tune new 5-man stuff at a level that allows a pug that never was there before to complete it on the first time they are in, then it will get farmed to death and the 5man players will be stuck for 3-4 months while 25man players learn and farm their raids. On the other hand if we tune it any harder - it will become non-pugable, and unsuitable to real casuals.

You can even take it somewhat further, instead of raising the level cap by 10 levels once expansion hits, break it so that each season adds 2 levels to the cap (and the instances are tuned to it), with new abilities and stuff added at each step this can also make downtuning for smaller groups feel more smooth (new class abilities compensate for lack of certain classes, etc)

At any point i would realy like to see something like this in WotlK+1 (WotlK is probably is out of the development phase where it could be introduced)

edit: speeling

Pro tip: the character length on your posts is something like 100,000 here. You don't need to have back to back posts for lengthy posts. This is a pretty obvious reprint from the WoW forums.

Badges and badge gear provide an accelerated PVE track for guilds that are catching up. The 2.3 badge gear allowed SC to go through all of tier five in a month. They're doing this already.

Is this really even a problem any more? I mean, I remember when it was loudly complained about back in Vanilla, but I cannot honestly say I've heard a peep about this. I mean, normally we get Arena vs. Raid, or "Casual vs Hardcore". But with Heroics, Badge Gear, 10 mans, and attunement removal, no one has really been complaining about a lack of more casual content.

Indeed. I thought I would get less TLDR here, and I was apparently correct in that assumption.

That's not the same thing, as I explained in post #12:

It was never a huge deal. The reason I post this now is that 2.4 is seeing the same "problems" 2.3 had.

In 2.3 they put tier 5 equivalent gear on a badge vendor and added a new ten man dungeon (which must have been extremely expensive to develop) that drops tier 5 equivalent gear. They also dropped the attunements for tier 5, and nerfed a lot of raid encounters to make them more accessible.

In 2.4 they will put tier 6 equivalent gear on a badge vendor and add a new five man dungeon (which probably uses mostly recycled graphics resources) that drops tier 4 equivalent gear. They will also drop the attunements for tier 6, and nerf a lot of raid encounters to make them more accessible.

The response? "Dropping attunements is lol, because they aren't good enough/don't deserve to see this content." "Putting tier 5/tier 6 on badge vendors is lol, because they aren't good enough/don't deserve to see this content." "Nerfing raids is lol because scrubs can kill anything now. Welfare epixx. Lol."

The thing is, the people complaining are kind of right. Rather than provide content for group X (with the exception of Zul'Aman and Magister's Terrace, which really are new content) they've recycled, rehashed or nerfed old stuff to try and make it more accessible.

EDIT

Let me put it this way. If in 2.4, rather than adding Sunwell Plateau, they went back and upgraded the loot in SSC and TK to Tier 6.5, and the loot in BT and Hyjal to Tier 7, would that be grand? That's what they're doing for 5-man, on the whole.

I think the key here is that it doesn't matter if the non-raiders have the loot. They aren't going to make use of it. However I put odds on it that they make up the bulk of the subscriptions and as such Blizzard realizes that they want to look cool too. Who cares if they can put it to use. Good players know each other. They form guilds and within these guilds they form cliques.

If mr. casual wants in with his badge/crafted loot he still has to earn his way in. He may get in the door but to stay in the room he still has to play. Thus what separates the raider from the casual. The raiders are not diminished because its not the loot that they should be aiming for. Its the fact they can do this content, they are coordinated, and they dedicated. The problem comes in is that outside of loot what is their reward for doing it?

If Blizzard can solve that last problem it would be an amazing feat. How do they recognize the people who push the edge from the rest without alienating either party? I am quite happy with content that is not accessible to everyone. I have the choice to join a guild which pushes the envelope.

I have absolutely no idea how to translate Vaelastrasz into 10-man or 5-man. I suppose there are two key aspects to the fight - everyone being overpowered, and everyone exploding. I'd hazard a guess that it would be impossible to replicate the everyone exploding aspect in 5-man without it being largely irrelevant. You could keep the infinite mana though, and it would be an interesting and unique fight for the people encountering it for the first time.

That was rather the point of what I proposed. Could you explain in more detail how I have failed to achieve that, so that I can correct the design?

Implementing soft caps with better drawbacks might be a less time-consuming method of doing a similar thing.

For example, you can enter a dungeon (the very same dungeon!) on Raid mode when it's released. When the next dungeon is unlocked, Assault mode becomes active for that raid. If you enter an instance on Assault instead of Raid, you can enter with up to 40 players (or up to 20 for 10 mans, up to 10 for 5 mans).

At the same time, you make much more gear (especially flashy gear) available through quests. Most quests cannot be completed on Assault mode, and non-progression oriented trash drops are less frequent (i.e. same amount of HoD, less gems and trash epics, no Badge of Justices off of bosses).

If you only unlocked Assault mode for Black Temple when Sunwell came out, it would largely negate the idea that people would learn fights the "wrong way" and there's a strong incentive for an Assault raid to improve to the point where they can "Raid" an instance--they'll get tons of loot from all the quests they could never do! Additionally, it will help all the more "friendly" guilds who want to keep a stable raidforce on but hate having people sit out. Many people won't care if they can't get the quested Phoenix mount if it means that they can bring all six of their IRL friends who play mages.

That introduces plenty of content for casual or incompetent players who are happy to zerg all over the place in huge groups, but doesn't add anything for small groups of competent players who want a meaningful progression of content and reward.

I think it's a good addition, but I don't think it's a good idea in isolation. There's a market of people who (apparently) went to Kara, and went to Zul'Aman, and somehow never went to SSC. Blizzard have apparently noticed this and are planning for it.

I'd like to start by saying that this is a very interesting idea, but I have a few issues with it.

1) It's already been brought up that tuning a 25-man encounter down to a 5-man fight would be immensely difficult. Implementing a system like this would, I think, stifle the creativity of the designers when they want to push the envelope in new raid encounters. This system would force them to consider, as early as the initial development stages, how they'd implement the encounter for 5-man, 10-man, and 25-man groups. The development time that would be theoretically saved by not forcing the creation of new art and assets would likely be spent completely reinventing a given encounter to suit a 5-man run.

2) From an art/asset design perspective, the huge architecture used in raid dungeons is built to accomadate the size of the raid going in. When that raid can be busted down to a 5-man team, the volume of empty space around the character doesn't feel epic as much as it would feel ill-used, bloated. Gruul for a 5-man team would be ludicrous, since you have this huge room that has nothing in it but Gruul -- it would be creepy and unsettling, like walking through an abandoned airport.

3) I like the idea of a return to soft raid caps, where a 5-man could be 10-manned, or a 10-man could be 20-manned. Hell, I'd go the distance and say allow 25-mans to be 40-manned (the raid panel still supports 40, so there might as well be a use for it other than flashback radis). The penalty of taking too many people to the instance could be as simple as removing Badges of Justice from the loot tables. A system like this would control itself because casuals will get to see the content but face greater competition for boss drops, and raiders will want to keep the cap because they can at least get BoJs out of the run.

From a design perspective, it becomes a matter of when you stop designing the game for groups larger than 5 people. Consider Blizzard's multiplayer history: the Warcraft RTS games would allow 2-8 people to throw down together at one time. Starcraft may have upped that number. Diablo allowed small groups of people to team up. World of Warcraft is the next step: they want large groups of people working together. They realized 40 was too many at once, but 25 is a good number. I think asking their designers to curtail their 25-man dreams in order to provide content for 5-man guilds is hampering their ability to move forward in their design philosophy.

That's not to say that tuning a 25-man down to a 10-man is a bad idea. I think 10-mans should be the bare minimum for a raid of any kind, and I think that there should be 10-man friendly content. Because putting 10 people together is far simpler than 25 or 40, and it's not much more difficult than getting 5 people together. I think the people who can't pull together a worthwhile 10-man team are a dramatic minority, and it makes more sense for Blizzard to build for larger groups and ask the players to meet them halfway by bringing the manpower.

Thanks for listening. I'm really looking forward to discussing this further.