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Old 04/27/10, 12:08 AM   #26
Shadout
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Undead Mage
 
Twisting Nether (EU)
Blizzard making raiding less time-consuming (but hopefully still interesting/challenging/fun).
I approve.
Blizz has been good at adjusting to the world around them, gaming becoming more casual, and maybe not least, Blizzards playerbase getting older. We are pretty damn far from EQ by now. This is just another step. And a step they ought to have taken from the start of WOTLK imo.

It will be quite a challenge to balance 10 man vs 25man though. Will have to see that happen before I believe it.

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Old 04/27/10, 12:10 AM   #27
Volrath50
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Originally Posted by swills View Post
This.

I think it's clear that Blizzard is leaning towards positioning WoW as a game that doesn't require you to login every day in order to get the most out of it. We've heard other speculated changes along these lines such as the replacement of the 'Daily Heroic' with something that resets less frequently. This definitely seems like an conscious decision on Blizzard's part.

Remember too that they have Starcraft II out in 2010, and presumably Diablo III sometime in 2011. I could definitely see some types of players thinking "I'll have to drop WoW when DIII comes out" but if WoW only takes up two nights a week, then it becomes much easier to play both. It seems like a pretty shrewd business move to me.
Furthermore, it's easier to retain a player, and to regain a former player than it is to get a new one. Over five years have passed since the start of the game, and players have aged. Someone who started in high school isn't going to have as much time now that they are in college/university. Someone who started when they were single in college isn't going to have as much time now that he's got a full time job, a wife and a child.

My brother quit WoW two years ago when he went to university, because (rightly or wrongly) he felt he no longer had the time to raid. He'd like to come back, and if Blizzard gives the impression of less play time needed to raid (something TBC style split tiers might do), he's pretty likely to come back.

"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."

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Old 04/27/10, 1:03 AM   #28
Grogzor
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What I want to know in regards to the difficulty of 10 mans, are they going to assume that you have the maximum assortment of buffs that you can for 10 man? Or are they going to assume some lesser number? Because if it is the maximum, the raid is essential pigeonholed into bringing these certain classes/specs and if it is some lesser number, then the content can be made less difficult by stacking the raid. Something Blizzard has tried to minimize drastically.

One big difference between 25 mans and 10 mans now are the number of things that can temporarily remove somebody from the fight. 25 man Marrowgar you have 3 Bone Spikes, 10 man you have 1. The reason behind this is if both of your healers got it, you would wipe pretty fashionably. Maybe they can make them more on par by creating some game logic where only one healer at a time could get affected by these?

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Old 04/27/10, 3:11 AM   #29
fr0d0b0ls0n
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Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)
If Badges = Valor Points, and considering a weekly cap, and different number of valor points per raid size:

For example, 2 Valor Point per boss in 10man, 5 Valor Point per boss in 25 man.

a) Weekly Cap <= 44. A 10man raider can get to the cap doing every daily and every boss (15 at launch). A 25 man raider can get to the cap without doing all bosses on 25man or daily heroics.

b) Weekly Cap > 44 & <= 89. A 10man raider can't get the cap even doing all the stuff. A 25 man raider can get to the cap doing enough content, and get VP gear faster. Almost 100% faster if the cap is near the high end.

c) Weekly Cap >89 (not probable). A 25man raider can't get to the cap doing all the stuff.

What option is the best? Can be frustrating to 10man players (not enough VP per week) or 25man players (getting more VP per boss doesn't have a point).

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Old 04/27/10, 3:42 AM   #30
Furion
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Assuming blizzard is smart they will balance the amount earned in 10man in a way that forces you to do daily heroics regularily and balance 25 man in a way that saves you most of that trouble once you can clear the current content. Saving effort in daily heroics could be another incentive for going through aditional effort organising 25 man raids. I don't think tweaking these numbers right is hard.

Actually I have quit wow numerous times and the main reason has always been that it takes too much of my precious time if I want to do PvP and PvE on a challenging level along people with equal skill. I expected wotlk to solve this issue but it turned out I had to run 10 mans (which I prefer, but there were no 10 man guilds on my server, which I expect to change in cataclysm) to prepare for 25 man every week meaning I had to raid just as much as before or even more to be in a good guild. This might finally allow one to spend a reasonable amount of time in wow and still be somewhat hardcore so if blizzard gets it right this time it is exactly the change I have been waiting for since vanilla.

And if they get the 10 vs 25 man balance right that might finally allow players to have a free choice on what they prefer. I think it's possible.

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Old 04/27/10, 4:07 AM   #31
gavstar
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At the high end, I see 25 man guilds making ppl roll/maintain 4 alts so they can do 10*10 mans with 6-7 alts, 2-3 mains to gear up the mains superfast then blitz the 25 man stuff. The precedent for this has already been set with high end guilds running 2-3 sets of alts already to gear up, test fights, unless there is a clear advantage in terms of loot to stick with 25 then i'm pretty sure alts/10's will be abused for gearing purposes.

With the removal of the limited tries system (which i personally dislike) I also see the return of the 9am raiders.

I'm not averse to changes in the system and these very clearly benefit the majority of wow raiders which is a good thing but either they've not thought out the potential for abuse very clearly or they really dont care how much less interesting/fair any progression races are.

I guess this leads to the question of "If you devalue high end pve progression races, does this in any way affect the game?"

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Old 04/27/10, 4:14 AM   #32
Elemento
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I'm happy about the changes. I'm in the frustrating position of being a wannabe WOW achievement completionist as well as having a real life, family, job, etc. So the idea of notching up all the raid achievements just running 25 man content and not finding additional time to run it all in 10 man aswell will be a great relief. Also the raids will be fresher. The nightmare of running ToC 10 normal / hard and 25 normal / hard really felt like Blizzard stretching content a lot further than they should. So this is giving us options, without compelling us to take them all. So a guild focusing on 25 man can do that, but a smaller one focusing on 10 man can do that too without feeling they're missing out. Also if you really have all the time in the world can can do 10 man on an alt and 25 on you main or visa versa

Now I agree getting the fights tuned correctly so they are of equal difficulty is a tough ask. But then we're expecting Blizzard to balance our classes and specs within certain tolerances, so why not the fights too? I'm sure they won't always succeed, but we're paying them the money to do their best and to keep us entertained.

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Old 04/27/10, 6:23 AM   #33
Tempestra
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The simple fact is that with this change, I'll continue to pay and play in Cataclysm. I love to raid but leading 30+ people, juggling egos and everything that goes with it is simply too much for a game that I've already been playing for over five years.

Even for those who continue to 25-man, this will help combat the "I raid X hours a week 25-man and still feel compelled to put in 3-6 hours for 10-man" syndrome, as many have already pointed out. This is a huge change and I hope Blizzard can pull off the balancing act that will justify them going in this direction.

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Old 04/27/10, 6:50 AM   #34
iwog
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What I find funny is that people are predicting the death of 25s if they reward the same as 10s. Doesn't that say that there's something inherently wrong if you have to be bribed to go to them. The bribe in this case is better purple pixels. And isn't this something we've all know for ages? I know my guild has tried to upsize twice and the bitching drama (both loot and general) that came with it just isn't worth the hassle. Plus you have the 10man cliques that form anyway. Sure there will still be 25 man guilds around but they will be for people who love the feel of a 25man, and hopefully 10 man guilds wont be treated as second class citizens any more.

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Old 04/27/10, 7:30 AM   #35
Zaniel
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I've got concerns on numerous issues here with the 25/10 shared locks, not the least of which is whether Blizzard will be able to achieve the balance they're proclaiming. To explain how I feel, I think an example is in order:

You want to get from Point A to Point B.
Taking one route, you can climb a tree, hop over a few fences, outrun some angry dogs, scale a cliff, and then whitewater raft through rapids. Taking another, you can walk three blocks and cross the street.
In my opinion, one of these is tons more fun. But the majority of people would shrug, look at the situation, and take the easier way.

That's the crux of my concern.

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Old 04/27/10, 7:46 AM   #36
Markoh
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Mal'Ganis
Originally Posted by iwog View Post
What I find funny is that people are predicting the death of 25s if they reward the same as 10s. Doesn't that say that there's something inherently wrong if you have to be bribed to go to them. The bribe in this case is better purple pixels. And isn't this something we've all know for ages? I know my guild has tried to upsize twice and the bitching drama (both loot and general) that came with it just isn't worth the hassle. Plus you have the 10man cliques that form anyway. Sure there will still be 25 man guilds around but they will be for people who love the feel of a 25man, and hopefully 10 man guilds wont be treated as second class citizens any more.
Well 10 man cliques in 25 man guilds would cease to exist if this change goes through (or at least be relegated to alts) so that really won't become part of the equation.

Don't think of it as a bribe but more of a reward because no matter if you make the fights perfectly equal getting 25 people to do something (for example Heigan dance) is going to be intrinsically more hard than only needing 10 people to do it correctly.

I think the fear is that those of us that enjoy 25 mans more will have a much harder time finding 25 good people to do them with b/c some will take the easier route of 10 mans.

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Old 04/27/10, 7:52 AM   #37
Belegûr
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Originally Posted by Zaniel View Post
I've got concerns on numerous issues here with the 25/10 shared locks, not the least of which is whether Blizzard will be able to achieve the balance they're proclaiming. To explain how I feel, I think an example is in order:

You want to get from Point A to Point B.
Taking one route, you can climb a tree, hop over a few fences, outrun some angry dogs, scale a cliff, and then whitewater raft through rapids. Taking another, you can walk three blocks and cross the street.
In my opinion, one of these is tons more fun. But the majority of people would shrug, look at the situation, and take the easier way.

That's the crux of my concern.
That's an interesting point, but you might also want to take something else into account: how often do you go from point A to point B? The first time, sure, the tree-fence-dog-cliff-rapids infested route will be fun, but having to do it every other day will soon become tiresome. A typical example of this was limiting access to certain raids by putting in long questlines. Doing them once? Fun, agreed. Doing them on each one of your alts? Hell no.

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Old 04/27/10, 8:07 AM   #38
suicuique
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Antonidas (EU)
I'm past the state of whining now, so this will hopefully be a civilized post. It might be anecdotal but this is inevitable in this context IMHO.

Coming summer we as a guild will be raiding for 5 years. Coming Cataclysm I expect our guild to break up in many 10-raid guilds. And I expect that, even when assuming 10-raids will be as difficult as 25-raids.
Why?
Because simple logistical issues impose a significant overhead on the organisation of 25-raids. While it all may be pixels as one poster above mentioned, it was the carrot on a stick which motivated most enthusiastic players who constantly thrived to have BiS gear, to top the WOL meters. With this change, why should they endure all the hassles of 25man raiding if the exact same loot can be achieved in leaner, simpler to organize 10man setups?
I seriously doubt different colored mounts, slightly different worded titles or more gold can serve the same purpose.

But is it for the worse, one might think. Experiencing the same encounters (with the same difficulty) with less logistical overhead will result in a better fun:work ratio. And this is what a game should deliver. The raiding atmosphere in 10 mens is mostly superior, there are less people who fuck up und less stress overall.
I can't deny all that, but for me it is just not the same game experience anymore. I'm not dellusional enough to think that my guild as I know it will persist. The epic scope of the game will suffer ... again.
While C'Thun was fought by 40, Yogg'Saron was vanquished by 25 deathbringers, the next old god will mostly be conquered by 10. By default, the old gods seem to get younger all the time.^^

Anyway this might come across whiny, and get me an infraction or worse for that. It isn't intended to be so. I might be just a little bitter and afraid, how most of the 25-raids are supposed to survive this change.
I just can't see that. Even at same difficulties, 10 men raiding is strictly superior to 25 from a guild leading standpoint.
Your mileage may vary. I certainly hope so.

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Old 04/27/10, 8:48 AM   #39
Tinwhisker
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Scarlet Crusade
Here's a thought about the new point system that's replacing badges. At first glance, this looks like a good incentive to choose 25man over the very likely easier 10man. The idea is that 25man raiders will have to do fewer or perhaps no dailies to reach their cap on the higher level points.

That's not actually the case though. Yesterdays post which started all this discussion clearly stated that Blizzard liked gating and would be continuing to do so. That means when tiers are released 25man raiders will also have to do dailies to reach their weekly cap because there simply won't be enough bosses available to reach the cap.

Fast forward to when all the gates in that tier are open (or soon thereafter). Now we find that the 25man raider has gone the harder raiding route and done nearly as many dailies as the 10man raider to be no more ahead in gear progression. But now that all the gates are open and the 25man raider can shrug off dailies, he's already bought everything he needs to and wouldn't have done them anyway.

There is still no gain in accomplishing the more difficult task. As I said before, 25man raid guilds will slowly lose people through normal means but there remains no incentive that they can offer recruits. All raiders will eventually be forced into the 10man model whether they want to raid that way or not.

Unfortunately, like S2 arena when everyone was forced there, Blizzard will call this a success only to later realized that they f'd up. At that point though you can't bring back 25man raiding without offering huge rewards over 10 which negates the whole premise of the change.

Last edited by Tinwhisker : 04/27/10 at 9:03 AM. Reason: clarity


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Old 04/27/10, 9:11 AM   #40
Exemplar
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Human Paladin
 
Scarlet Crusade
I would expect a lower Valor Point weekly cap than people may expect, and lower purchase costs than the current gear. Something such as first lockout bosses on 10 + daily random equals or exceeds weekly cap. 25 first lockout would equal or exceed cap without daily randoms. As lockouts open and you progress then you will be able to cap in 10 or 25man and entirely ignore daily random until the next tier (which may have a new 5man or two to spice it back up, or nostalgia 3-6 months of no 5mans makes it not feel painful). If your guild cannot complete all the bosses at 25 on release, then you can still supplement with dailies to reach the cap.

"Forcing" 25man to run the daily heroic to reach cap does not seem to "reward" them. Part of the "reward" incentive for running 25 over 10 should logically be less/no requirement on running dailies. Recall that in the first tier a 5man will not take 15 minutes because you're horribly overgeared - you're looking at those 1-2 hour experiences with people who have never run it before and who are in quest greens and 1 or 2 blues. Daily random worked well at end tier to revitalize 5s, but fresh out of the gates in a new x-pac it will feel far different.

As has been said, gear prices seem scaled around maximum possible income: 10 + 25 + dailies + weeklies. If you can hardcode the maximum income, consequently making it more approachable by the median player, you can set prices around this number.

Regarding 10/25 raid size, anyone else think it's odd that we continue to have 10 and 25 as the numbers? In Vanilla you had 40, then later 20. 20 + 20 = 40. Made sense. Then in BC suddenly we had 10 and 25. Going from Kara to SSC/TK was often difficult because two 10man teams did not fill a 25. We still have a 10/25 split and it appears to become more important in Cataclysm. Why don't raids transition to 15/30 (unlikely + unwieldy) or (preferably) 10/20? Why intentionally make the scales disparate?

I like the idea behind the current proposal. They want to prevent people feeling they must run 10, 25, and daily heroics for badges to gear ASAP - or create a disparity between those willing to do so and those who take a more casual single-raid experience approach. Call it softening the hardcore/casual divider further. Which tends to get the hardcore up in arms and please the casual. They also want to ease loot creation on their end to level the playing field (it completely removes the "best item happens to be in smaller content" issues). Fine tuning it so it doesn't destabilize other sectors of their game (such as guilds) is where they will be doing the most work.

I am very surprised they didn't test-drive this with Ruby Sanctum prior to announcing this is how Cata will work.

To finish on a lighter note, and don't take this as real Blizzard motivation, just something one of our guild members posted on our forums.
TBC: 10 and 25 man raids are different content with different loot.
WOTLK: 10 and 25 man raids are the same content with different loot.
Cataclysm: 10 and 25 man raids are the same content with the same loot.

Looks like they're testing just how lazy they can get before people stop taking it.

Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."

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Old 04/27/10, 9:18 AM   #41
Blutelf
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I think some posters here are absolutely missing the main point: There needs to be a unifying goal for 25 man raiders and with this change there is not going to be one. Differently colored mounts? Tabards? Titles? These are merely cosmetic issues.

Right now it is the fact that 25 man instances are the hardest and that they drop the best loot ingame.

Remove both of these things and there will be no incentive, no reason to raid 25 man instances. Unless you "feel like it". But you shouldn't have to invent a reason to do so, or else what is the point of doing it in the first place? Why have 25 man raids in the game at all now unless the only reason is to gently fade out the 25 man raids during Cata?

This is how it seems to me right now, and I am fairly confident that this is what most people have in mind when they are talking about "destroying 25 man raids".

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Old 04/27/10, 9:19 AM   #42
Tinwhisker
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Originally Posted by Exemplar View Post
To finish on a lighter note, and don't take this as real Blizzard motivation, just something one of our guild members posted on our forums.
TBC: 10 and 25 man raids are different content with different loot.
WOTLK: 10 and 25 man raids are the same content with different loot.
Cataclysm: 10 and 25 man raids are the same content with the same loot.

Looks like they're testing just how lazy they can get before people stop taking it.
Something similar was said in our forums and I like the reply it got.

...no way is this Blizzard "being lazy." Even if a decision reduces the time it takes for them to do something, they just spend that saved time doing something else. It's not like they're trying to figure out ways to change things solely for the purpose of getting out of work at noon ;P
That's probably as true as it gets. I still think Blizzard is going to hurt 25man raiding here but at least we're likely to see a lot more content. And if we don't see substantially more content here I'm going to be very disappointed.


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Old 04/27/10, 9:24 AM   #43
Xieon
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Draenei Shaman
 
Feathermoon
...

Last edited by Xieon : 04/27/10 at 9:41 AM. Reason: Double post

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Old 04/27/10, 9:40 AM   #44
Xieon
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Draenei Shaman
 
Feathermoon
My main concern with this potential change to raiding structure is how 25 man raids will fare when up against the hardest level bosses. Using some examples from the WoWProgress numbers, which are valid enough for this argument, less than 4% of all guilds have completed Call of the Grand Crusade in a 25 man enviroment. In contrast, almost 50% of the tracked 10 man groups have completed the 10 man version of ToGC. If this level of disparity isn't addressed, a 25 man group will dead end on a boss and then deal with their 10 best breaking off to finish the encounter and collect their achievement points. I completed the Dedicated Insanity challenge, it wasn't that hard with a decent group.

From what I've heard so far on my realm forums, many people have a bad taste in their mouth with 25 man groups. There is a whole subset of player that never gets to enjoy a rapidly progressing group or have fun with a decent group of people in a 25 man raid. Quite often they are subjected to questionable loot rules, poor leadership and a generally miserable raiding experience, all in the name of trying to advance their character as defined by the game. Most of us here, I'm sure, try to rise above this level but for the average player, they'll never see the light of day in a solid raiding guild. Imagine your only impression of 25 man raiding is some screaming kid with a vent server running a group of horrible trade chat pugs to their death against the Morrowgar trash. That's what some people see as raiding.

This change is going to, and already has, put serious pressure on established 25 man guilds of all levels of advancement. The guilds that will be hurt the most will be the 'middle of the road' guilds that are part friends, part progression, which attract better players more interested in loot. I don't consider it bribing people to play at that point, they seek out an enviroment that suits them. This change has the potential of distilling talent down to 10 mans and trimming down the 25 man raid population substantially. The potential for guild crippling mutiny will skyrocket.

I'm holding out for the 25 mans surviving with the promise of more loot and incentives. If player skill levels, encounter difficulty and gear is all similar, the only defining difference will be the amount of gear. While people argue that skill is more important than gear, you will not be defeating end bosses in quest blues. All things being equal, the groups with more gear will get the first kills. The 25 man will retain its position of being the progression raid. I hope with the badge plan that a 25 man raid will also satisfy a large portion of the time requirement for each week, with its promise of more loot/badges.

I'm a proponent of the changes as well as 25 man raiding, I disliked having to run 10 mans to gear for 25 or just to acquire badges. As it is I'm in horrible shape from taking a few months off and coming back to a server entrenched in heroic modes with minimal badge income.

The main point I've been making to those asking me to join their 10 man is the fact that their elite groups haven't raided a single 10-man in wrath in the appropriate gear. In all cases these have been main raiders in multiple guilds utilizing higher gear levels to trivialize portions of 10 man raiding. This will be new ground for spoiled 25 man raiders in 10 mans, hopefully.

For now we wait and see what updates Blizzard makes to this plan and I move forward planning on continuing to administer and help lead my 25 man, provided enough people still want to play together in the fall.

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Old 04/27/10, 9:54 AM   #45
Ukerric
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Originally Posted by Exemplar View Post
I would expect a lower Valor Point weekly cap than people may expect, and lower purchase costs than the current gear.
I expect a much larger valor cost. Much, much larger. In the thousands/ten of thousands range...

Noticed the little paragraph about converting PvE and PvP points to each other at a loss? I expect the heroism and valor points to have about exactly the same kind of scale that honor and arena points have currently. Meaning bosses will award you something like a hundred valor points, not 3 frost emblems...

In theory, I wouldn't be surprised to see PvE stuff having exactly the same costs as the PvP stuff - except in PvE points instead of honor.

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Old 04/27/10, 9:57 AM   #46
Tinwhisker
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Scarlet Crusade
Here's a thought I had about design intents. Let's assume that Blizzard is currently balancing 10man raiding in WotLK for 10man gear (they say they do). Obviously 25man raid groups can muscle their way through the majority of a 10man ICC raid with little problem. Besides that though, even the 10man raid groups have a fair amount of 25man gear among them unless you're in the minority of "strict" raid groups. This means that the majority of 10man groups also have it a bit easier than intended as well whether they know it or not.

In WotLK, 25man raid groups have never had the benefit of raiding with gear from a higher level so this next part doesn't directly apply but 10man groups have always had gear from a higher level to help them and the next part is very much applicable.

Do you honestly think Blizzard will tune Cataclysm instances the same way they have in WotLK, thus making normal modes comparatively harder for the 10man raid groups because they will no longer have the benefit of gear from a higher level? No, they won't. Blizzard will not make it harder for those groups and by extension to achieve some semblance of parity between the difficulty of 10man and 25man they will have to tune down 25man quite a bit making 25man even easier than it is now.


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Old 04/27/10, 10:18 AM   #47
Exemplar
Bald Bull
 
Human Paladin
 
Scarlet Crusade
Originally Posted by Ukerric View Post
I expect a much larger valor cost. Much, much larger. In the thousands/ten of thousands range...

Noticed the little paragraph about converting PvE and PvP points to each other at a loss? I expect the heroism and valor points to have about exactly the same kind of scale that honor and arena points have currently. Meaning bosses will award you something like a hundred valor points, not 3 frost emblems...

In theory, I wouldn't be surprised to see PvE stuff having exactly the same costs as the PvP stuff - except in PvE points instead of honor.
You misinterpret. A single daily random gets you 2 Frost Badges. This is 1/30th of the requirement for tier gloves.

30 dailies = 1 item. But so does a clear of ICC on 10 and 25, their internal weekly quests, the weekly raid boss, and a week of dailies. One week vs one month. Blizzard prices based on the maximum model.

Expect the maximum earnings to net an item every week to two weeks. This maximum Valor earning should be possible through some combination of dailies and raiding 10 or 25.

This is inflation. 2 badges to hundreds/thousands of Valor Points. However, costs for items should inflate at a lesser rate. Thus the value of one random daily is greater than at present.

If you get paid $10/hr and an item costs $1000, that's 100 hours. If you're suddenly paid 10,000 foozle/hr and an item costs 500,000 foozle, it's suddenly 50 hours.

The weekly Valor Cap to cost-of-item comparison will be smaller than at present. Effective cost goes down.

Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."

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Old 04/27/10, 10:18 AM   #48
Lucitron
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Originally Posted by Grogzor View Post
What I want to know in regards to the difficulty of 10 mans, are they going to assume that you have the maximum assortment of buffs that you can for 10 man? Or are they going to assume some lesser number? Because if it is the maximum, the raid is essential pigeonholed into bringing these certain classes/specs and if it is some lesser number, then the content can be made less difficult by stacking the raid. Something Blizzard has tried to minimize drastically.

One big difference between 25 mans and 10 mans now are the number of things that can temporarily remove somebody from the fight. 25 man Marrowgar you have 3 Bone Spikes, 10 man you have 1. The reason behind this is if both of your healers got it, you would wipe pretty fashionably. Maybe they can make them more on par by creating some game logic where only one healer at a time could get affected by these?
One way to solve the buff-problem for 10-man raids is that they share even more buffs around among classes and/or specs. Another solution is that they nerf the buffs so that it will not be seen as a mandatory buff to have. Further, it is possible that this scenario could even touch upon utility abilities that has no direct impact on the raid encounters.

In short, class/spec homogenization could be a result with this move.

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Old 04/27/10, 10:20 AM   #49
kharen
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Originally Posted by Blutelf View Post
I think some posters here are absolutely missing the main point: There needs to be a unifying goal for 25 man raiders and with this change there is not going to be one. Differently colored mounts? Tabards? Titles? These are merely cosmetic issues.

Right now it is the fact that 25 man instances are the hardest and that they drop the best loot ingame.

Remove both of these things and there will be no incentive, no reason to raid 25 man instances. Unless you "feel like it". But you shouldn't have to invent a reason to do so, or else what is the point of doing it in the first place? Why have 25 man raids in the game at all now unless the only reason is to gently fade out the 25 man raids during Cata?

This is how it seems to me right now, and I am fairly confident that this is what most people have in mind when they are talking about "destroying 25 man raids".
The point of having 25s in Cata is that a significant enough segment of the playerbase claims to enjoy running raids with larger groups, and the intent of the new design is to allow people who like 10s and people who like 25s to enjoy the game equally.

If it turns out that most people are only running 25s now because they're bribed into doing so with a large carrot (better gear), and removal of the carrot leads the gradual demise in 25s during Cata, I'm not sure i really see how that's a bad thing for the game as a whole.

It is a game, after all. The goal should be for the largest number of people to have the most fun they can. If the players decide that 25s aren't fun, and they're having more fun by running 10s, then that's a good thing overall from Blizzard's perspective.

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Old 04/27/10, 10:50 AM   #50
Camaris
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One of the best changes, IMO, is the reintroduction of heroics and blues into the progression. In WotLK, heroics were largely ignored until they started dropping proper badges in a later patch (by which time they had become 'trivial mode' instead of 'heroic mode'), because you just wander into Naxx without any real gear requirements. This new change seems a step in the direction of TBC, where heroics were quite a decent accomplishment early on.

From the looks of it, it seems the main draw of 25 mans will be increased Valor Points and more loot dropped per raider. I'd be happy if doing 25 mans and some weeklies would put you at the VP limit, and 10 mans would require daily heroics and perhaps more weeklies to max out.

I don't know if that is 'enough' to keep 25m alive. In fact, I'd be quite happy to just focus on one or the other, instead of the annoyances of 'required off-night raiding' where you run 10-mans just to get that extra trinket/title/badges.

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