Anthara

I think Blizzard's gradated dumbing down of content is for the most part an effective way of achieving several of the OP's objectives. The elite with world-firsts are known and revered amongst those who care about such things by tackling bugged end-bosses with fast respawns and such. Lesser guilds get their kills in over time as bugs are fixed and nerfs are implemented. Eventually, attunements are removed, gear-checks are reduced, fights are made more forgiving -- to the point where alts and fresh players can tackle them.

25-mans converted to 5-mans just wouldn't feel right in terms of mechanics and community. Adding NPCs to some fights is novel and acceptable, but to virtually every fight would get dull quick. Reducing requirements for multi-tank and mass cc fights would shatter the core essence of those fights. Assuming Blizzard put aside the considerable time to tweak 25 -> 5 man mechanics for the sake of saving on artwork, why not spend a bit of extra time and dump selected bosses into new 5-man and rework some of their skills from the ground up? It would then become new content for everyone, not just non-raiders.

As for rewards, there are many options already for fresh players to begin. Why discount PvP in this model? It is a part of the game, and a simple system to participate in for anyone with time to play the game. Skill is not a necessity, but certainly ramps up the rate at which such rewards can be acquired. The badges system is one addition I greatly approve of. It helps to numb some of the pain from stupidity like getting 12 Kiss of the Shards vs. 0 Wraith Blades, and provides a reliable way to gear fresh toons.

To sum it up, Blizzard has done a decent job of tending to customer demand for most of the base issues the OP wanted to tackle. Could they do it better? Yes, but as he mentioned, that would take resources one way or the other. Given the option, those resources are better spent making new content for everyone.

 

Alici

"Dumbing down" is a fix, but only assuming that people actually can or want to progress in a 5 -> 10 -> 25 model. The entire premise of the OP's proposal is that there are those who cannot make this type of progression.

Take myself, for example. I used to raid 5-7 days a week Pre-BC, but real life commitments forced me to stop. It's gotten to the point where I can't even commit to Karazhan runs; I simply will not submit my guild or friends to my disturbance when my real life could stop my gameplay for the day literally at a moment's notice. Therefore, I am resigned to PUG 5-mans and heroics.

I have all the in-game tools needed to raid with my guild, and the gear needed to support it. However, my situation simply does not allow that option to me. Therefore, I cannot make use of Blizzard's intended progression ladder, and my raiding shaman in purples sits because she no longer gets any use out of running the same heroics over and over.

The OP's solution is modeled after Arena Seasons, and it's actually an elegant system of progression. You keep progressing your character playing how you like to play, which in my case would be 5-man instances. Forcing people into certain types of playstyles (PvP, raiding) that they might not like or have access to in order to progress their characters alienates a lot of players.

And it's been covered before, but in terms of Blizzard's resources, it takes a lot less resources to tune an instance or encounter than it does to create a new one.

 

Rajaat9

15 hours of *scheduled* wow sounds like a lot to me, since I'm going to guess you spend another 15 hours a week doing non-raid activities, pvp, farming, etc. I don't actually HAVE 30 hours a week to play wow, unless I want to really cut down on other activities I enjoy. But, that's neither here nor there...

Doing something with people you consider friends is NOT unique to WoW, or video games at all. I bet people on a football team after a super bowl victory feel just as elated as you do after beating Illidan for the first time. We're not talking about comparing "vibe". Just the look, and to a limited extent the mechanics. We don't want to share our happiness with the PUG that we beat an instance with. But we DO want to be challenged, and we do want to be entertained. One can make a 5 man look like a raid. You could build a 5 man encounter to appear bigger than it really is (the temple event in ZF is a good example). You can make a 5 man instance epic in scope (a complete clear of BRD takes as long as a raid, longer then some I would guess). And you can make complex bosses in 5 mans, with interesting and varied abilities (The best example of this I can think of is Arugal, at the end of SFK. There isn't a boss quite as interesting to fight as him for the next 30 levels at least). This can and has all been done. We just want it continued at the end game, so people who don't have 5 dedicated hours, 3 days a week, can continue to have fun in PvE once they hit 70.

Let me sum this up again. 5 man groups are not trying to build the group dynamics that exist in a raid. But that doesn't mean we don't want interesting, challenging, and sufficiently epic encounters.

 

Anthara

The OP's system is involved, but I wouldn't call it elegant. It works on the model of Strat/BRS having player caps reduced, which admittedly is one way of handling content accessibility for larger playerbases. This motion in fact sounds quite similar to cries for 5-man raids years ago. Blizzard gave us Heroics in response. And that worked quite well, until they nerfed heroics so badly. Perhaps part of the solution to "challenging 5-mans" is to revert their difficulty. Possibly add another difficulty tier, similar to the Arena style solution hinted at. Add "Legendary" difficulty above Heroic, make everything hit harder, give the bosses some new tricks, raise the ilvl and quantity of epic drops including gems, and drop 2x badges/boss. Continue the trend every so often as raid/PvP gear outpaces the 5-man selection.

As for accessing lore, wait till the expansion, get to 80 and 5-10 man the old lvl 70 25-mans. Just pray Blizz doesn't break something like the Emps and not care enough to go back and fix them... Casual players without the time or desire to be "bleeding edge" will not access elite content when it comes out, when it's still challenging. That's fine. Otherwise, why would it be considered elite, what would the bleeding edge strive for? The player-cap reduction system the OP proposed would actually be a big hit on more casual raiding guilds like mine who are "months behind" world-first guilds. On our relatively relaxed schedule, "Age n" would have come and gone before we ever got around to accessing the content in true raid format. The existence of 5-man versions (even if taking it on 25-man was an option) would belittle our desire to complete it. We in turn would be punished simply because our timetables and compositional resources limited the rate of progress compared to world-first guilds. Even the OP acknowledges any system of making content accessible to a wider mass should be done over time. Waiting for the expansion to raise the level cap should function just as well for the most part, and requires virtually no backwards resource allocation on Blizzard's part. You want to see Illidan the first week he's out? Raid everyday on the PTR when he's being tested, then spend 24/7 downing him the first week he's Live. You want to see Illidan eventually and are willing to put in the time and effort to 25-man him? Keep at it, and you'll see him in a few months. You want to see Illidan, but can't or won't put in the time to 25-man him as he's intended? Wait till the expansion for it to become legacy.

As for 15 hours of raiding, not all of our raiders can stay the full 5 hrs/night. Some can't make it all 3 nights. Some even take entire weeks/months off. Our leadership works around that, and yes it does get frustrating, but results are achieved. 1-2 hours worth of dailies, farming/grinding are enough to cover raid costs. We even offer a standby system which allows excess raiders to go and farm during raid times while still earning credit. While we certainly ask that our raiders reserve some time for us, we expect them to do it efficiently. That's simply not something you can expect from rag-tag pugs, and I see no convincing reason to mold elite content to their needs. You don't have time for 25 mans, you don't have time for it. 5-mans exist for you. You want a challenging 5-man? Ask for harder heroics. Ask for new 5-mans everyone can enjoy.

Expansion content now includes:
# 4x 25-man raids (4 - 9 bosses)
# 2x 25-man encounters (1 - 2 bosses)
# 2x 10-man raids (6 - 16 bosses)
# 15x 5-mans (2 - 5 bosses)
# 15x heroics (2 - 5 bosses)

There already exists quite a lot of content accessible to a wide playerbase compared to limited content. I for one don't buy the argument that Blizzard ignores the casual masses in favor of raiders. Also make note that all 15 5-mans + heroics were available for enjoyment on release, while 2 of the 25-mans and 1 of the 10-mans had to be patched in over long spans of time, bugs and all. Perhaps it would feel like 5-mans were better catered for if Blizz had only released 2 per hub and turned on the remaining over time? Nonetheless, I wholeheartedly encourage asking Blizz for more new 5-mans. Emphasis on new, not backward capped. There are still several zones waiting for fresh instance hubs to unlock lore and excitement

I know I may come off as an elitist jerk with too much time... but I've run the gauntlet from having nothing but 80+ hrs/wk of playtime, to barely having 1-2 hrs every other week, to taking months off. I didn't expect to raid 25-mans when I didn't have time, despite my guild asking my under-geared toon to tag along. I quested, leveled alts, did dailies, occasionally 5-manned, chatted, and sometimes simply enjoyed the view. And I enjoyed it quite well. When I wanted to see Vashj, Kael, Archi and Illidan, I put time into the guild and game. Or rather, when I had time to put in, I decided I'd like to work towards seeing them...

 

Jaxtrasi

You never really answered the basic question. Sure, 25-man content should be restricted to those who can and will do what is necessary to do it. Why though, should specific named boss X be restricted to 25-man content?

"I've never known people as dogmatic as those who insist that all opinion is equally subjective."

 

frber

Blizzard really needs to sort out the difficulty scaling from normal to heroic before they attempt that. if they make legendary similar to heroic with everything just hitting alot harder they may end up with them beeing a gear/skill check for tank and healer only while DPS is more or less pointless and certainly don't get any harder challenges.

With legendary you could very easily end up in a situation where all the DPS only wants to do legendary, because well they can do it just as well and likely no major difference compared to normal, but all the tanks and healers need to grind like crazy to meet the gear checks.

Though DPS upgrades beeing pointless in large parts of the game, and DPS having much lower gear and l2p checks compared to tanks/healers needs to be sorted regardless.

 

Sebalot

While I can see the logic of the suggestions in this thread, I don't believe going in and reworking old content to the degree that is necessary is a good idea.

I think it is a good thing that when you say ZG, everyone who been there knows what you mean. But if when you say Kara a few months into the game (using these suggestions) you can mean Kara25, Kara10, Kara5 etc it starts to get more confusing. Especially if the bosses stay the same. I guess we can just invent more abbreviations for everything:

"Prince10 almost wiped us today lol".

I think generally if you want to extend the game it is better to reuse artwork, trashmobs, models and make something new out of it instead of going Frankenstein on old dungeons.

 

Jaxtrasi

What do you think of heroics?

"I've never known people as dogmatic as those who insist that all opinion is equally subjective."

 

Douglas

Not really.

1) Where's the actual content progression?

If Heroic Ramparts were accessible to folks in dungeon blues, but Heroic Slave Pens required people who had geared up in Heroic Ramparts first, and Heroic Mana Tombs was further along still, and there were quest chains or something that indicated the right order to you, that would be a lot better.

2) Where are the actual new experiences?

If we were still running strat/scholo et cetera today, but Blizzard had kept adding new Heroic/Uberheroic/WTFPWNheroic levels to it, with better and better gear, would people find that acceptable? Of course not! There needs to be a trickle of actual new stuff -- new to this group, at least. Recycling the content, or at least the lore behind the content, of the larger raid instances, scaling it down or rewriting it for 10-man and then 5-man teams, would be a way to achieve that.

 

Sebalot

Heroics would have had the same lifetime that normal dungeons had without the badges. Ie, you would run them a handful times then never go back. Badges could have been inserted anywhere. They might even have scrapped heroics and just have had badges in normal 5-man dungeons.

I think heroics overall have failed. They were supposed to be a challenge but only were so because they were horribly balanced at the start with tanks being one or twoshotted regularly, rogues eating cleaves that killed them all the time and mages being by far the preferred dps class because of sheep. Later on now that they fixed them they are pretty much the same as normal dungeons, having only served to make normal dungeons redundant.

If I understood OP correctly, he isn't looking for something like heroics anyway. He is looking for a continuing morphing of raids into smaller raids and then into 5-man dungeons. That is a completely different beast.

 

Jaxtrasi

Actually I meant with reference to your (reasonable, IMO) suggestion that it might be confusing for there to be multiple versions of a different boss or dungeon. It doesn't seem to be a problem with heroics.

"I've never known people as dogmatic as those who insist that all opinion is equally subjective."

 

Zifna

They have the additional benefit of making the leveling-up dungeons count as max-level dungeons. I.E. there are 15 5-man dungeons of roughly comparable rewards/difficulty for level 70s, but without Heroic mode, Ramparts et all would be a little too wussy for people to run regularly, similar to how BRD/Maraudon were.

 

Ghando

I think many people in this thread are over-estimating the breadth of difficulty and tuning that is available for smaller-scale content. It's great to say you want to see encounters re-tuned for smaller numbers of players because it's easier to organize and be successful with smaller groups, but I don't think it's enough to say "take everything and make it smaller!" Maybe it's been done well with Kael'thas in 2.4 (I haven't done MT on PTR, so I can't really comment) but you run into the fact that 5-mans just aren't hard enough to serve as more than a short step in progression. They work as a way to get rid of whatever RNG greens and quest rewards you're using when you hit the level cap. The Heroics worked as a way to bring your raiders up to speed for Karazhan, though as somebody else has pointed out that was largely a product of the badges and badges could have come from anywhere.

There have been some fun and difficult 5-man and 10-man encounters. But what makes you think there's enough room to grow that there could really be "progression." Douglas suggests a system wherein you needed to gear up in Ramparts to do Mana Tombs to do Arcatraz, and so on...but what suggests there could actually be such fine-tuned progression? I contend there's not enough room to grow; with only 5 player slots the devs are very limited in terms of which mechanics they can implement and expect you do deal with.

For example, a 5-man Felmyst would be difficult to implement because of the centrality of Mass Dispel to countering her Gas Nova. In a 25-man raid that's a good mechanic. But without drastically changing the numbers involved or the mechanic itself you cannot tune it for a 5-man group because you cannot assume a Priest; hell, you can't even assume a defensive dispeller. See where I'm going with this? 5-mans just aren't very negotiable and I think it's naive to state that Blizzard should be able to re-hash raid dungeons for drastically different audiences and have it just work.

This is to say nothing of the complaints there would be if you really had to "progress" through the instances the way you say you want to. If you want "gearing up" in Ramparts to be a prerequisite for Mana Tombs, then you're fine with running Ramparts a dozen+ times to get a few critical upgrades? You and the entire casual population of WoW will be happy to farm 5-man content the way raiders have to farm 25-man content long after the shine is off the apple? Really?

What it really comes down to is facing reality. Your $15/month in no way guarantees you really satisfying progression, it doesn't guarantee you full PvP epics, it doesn't guarantee you anything but unlimited access to the game and your characters. If you want satisfying progression in a PvE environment, then raid. If you want to run the occasional 5-man and dailies with your RL buddies, do that. If you want to have a Gladiator title and be an arena "star," then work towards that goal. Your subscription fee guarantees you all the in-game means to accomplish any goal you set for yourself in the game. If you can only commit a certain amount of time/effort to the game, then that's how you set your priorities and no reasonable person would tell you to do otherwise. But I don't think asking Blizzard to warp the MMO space/time continuum makes sense.

 

Anthara

Lady Vashj being taken down by the same number of players as needed for Hydromancer Thespia? Somehow that isn't quite as epic and significantly diminishes any relative danger between the two and the degree of achievement for downing them.

On the other extreme of what you're proposing, there have been noted accounts of ultra-elite buffed-to-the-teeth players 3-manning Onyxia and 10-manning MC back when they were on-level. Wait to be +10 levels of the content and have green gear which surpasses the epics those guys packed, and they should be even easier to 5-man. Effectively removing the 25-man restriction over time. Instead of being a restriction, it becomes an option to bring up to 25 over-level toons to make the situation even easier.

As already mentioned, I feel Blizzard made a mistake in nerfing Heroics so badly. New tricks need NOT be restricted to bosses alone. DPS/CC should not be made ineffective. It should be made more challenging. Borrow from 25-mans, such as the dispelling packs to Kael.

Here, I'll throw in an example of potential boss changes using Murmur:
# Normal - Murmur's Touch places an explosive countdown on one target.
# Heroic - Murmur's Touch places an explosive countdown on one target. All players are pulled to the target.
# Legendary - Murmur's Touch places an explosive countdown on one target. All players are pulled to the target and everyone but the target is debuffed with a 50% slowing magic effect, dispellable.
# Valiant - Murmur's Touch places an explosive countdown on one target. All players are pulled to the target and everyone but the target is debuffed with a 50% slowing magic effect with a 3 second silence.
# Dauntless - Murmur's Touch effects everyone but the highest agro. All players are pulled to the highest agro.

If you want an elegant PvE scenario which emulates progressive arena gearing beyond badges, tiering heroics is that solution.

1) The cheap, but potentially lore-pleasing way Blizz could do this is to set up attunement chains of sorts. Gear requirements need not be standard armor/weapons, but could be quest-effect items necessary to control mechanics in progressive dungeons. Think getting a Tears of the Goddess type item from Sethekk in order to defeat Murmur. The downside is it would place restrictions on content access, which is possibly counter to the desire of the OP.

2) Certain bosses could be active only on harder modes. This is already in effect for Heroic Shattered. Include more challenging mechanics, borrowing from raid mobs could work to that end. Think giving the 5-packs in Shattered the shield toss and spinning sword skills from Bloodboil and Gorefiend trash. Sentinels in Arcatraz getting 1-shot the Robot's skills from Council trash. 5-manners get to experience 25-man mechanics, 25-mans stay 25-man. 5-mans still have to progress to harder modes to experience these mechanics. Win/win?



25-mans don't have to be demoted to 5-man status in order for 5-manners to experience the mechanics they contain. A sense of progress and increasing challenge/rewards can be applied to existing 5-mans without demoting 25-mans. And if you simply must access the 25-mans themselves with 5 players, keep waiting for the level cap increase.

 

Douglas

While true, the mechanics aren't necessarily relevant.

I have friends who want to see BT. They don't care about seeing any of the mechanics that are currently in BT. They care about it from a lore standpoint, from a story standpoint.

What's ironic to me here is, many truly serious raiders care almost exclusively about the mechanics and the details surrounding the encounters, learning the fights, overcoming the challenges, et cetera, and would still be content if the lore was a lot more thin. But many of the people who aren't raiders care deeply about the lore, and would be very satisfied to experience that lore even as simple cutscenes. So designing things so that you have to raid in order to experience the lore seems upside down.

 

Jaxtrasi

You've contradicted yourself here. The progression of bosses with regard to realism is meaningless. Who are Kael and Lady Vashj? They're powerful heroes. By comparison to Ragnaros? They're nothing. And yet they're massively more powerful in game than Ragnaros is. More powerful than C'Thun, too. They're not intended to scale realistically. Raid trash takes 25 people to kill because it would be very dull if it didn't, but the realistic world proposed by such a system of exponentially scaling naga and fel orcs is ridiculous.

Best to suspend disbelief really. If Onyxia can be three-manned, does that make Hydromancer Thespia more epic than Onyxia? Of course not. Isn't Ossirian supposed to be the most powerful, rather than the least powerful, of the Anubisath? What about Hakkar? Surely Hakkar is a mite tougher than Zul'jin? In Warcraft 2, Kargath and Gorefiend were roughly as tough as each other. Since then, Kargath has become super-charged with fel energy and Gorefiend has died. Their level and raid size in WoW tells you nothing whatsoever about their actual relative power in the theoretical setting.

No. Not win/win. Win/lose. 5-manners don't care about 25-man mechanics. Why on earth would you think that they would? 5-manners care about 25-man NPCs (I say NPCs rather than bosses to communicate that it's not their abilities, but their identity, which is relevant) and they care about 25-man loot. Hateful Strike is neither here nor there. Only raiders care about Hateful Strike, and only because caring about it is a necessary component of success, not because it's remotely interesting in its own right.

Again I would ask, where did you get the notion that mechanics were relevant?

"I've never known people as dogmatic as those who insist that all opinion is equally subjective."

 

Jaxtrasi

From the original post:
Several examples are listed in post #4.

Meaningful progression is a steadfast of all computer RPGs. Requesting it, or adding it, does not in any way represent an aberration. It represents a return to form.

"I've never known people as dogmatic as those who insist that all opinion is equally subjective."

 

Anthara

Mechanics are relevant. It's an important aspect of interactivity in the game. Without having mechanics to deal with, the whole game may as well boil down to walking up to NPCs and clicking chat bubbles with pages of lore. Watch a movie, read a book about it. The cutscenes approach could work well. Does anybody bother fraps'ing the full dialogue of end-bosses? I admit those 30-60 sec scenes are entertaining the first time, but get annoying fast after the 10th time.

I won't claim to be very knowledgeable about lore and relative power between all bosses. The way I see it is their relative power in their respective domains. Ragnaros > Emp. Nefarian > Drakkisath. Vashj > Thespia. Whether Kel'Thuzad > C'Thun > Nefarian > Ragnaros is something I don't claim to