Infraction for Blacksen: 1. All posters are to make an effort to communicate clearly.

Kaubel · 11/20/09, 6:42 PM

Post: Icecrown Citadel "Gating" system
User: Blacksen
Infraction: 1. All posters are to make an effort to communicate clearly.
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

It's always something with you. This time it's the inexplicable GIANT GAPS BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS.

Enjoy your month off.

Original Post:

For Ulduar (and Sartharion), the hard mode concept seemed to be really working. General Vezax, XT-002 Deconstructor, Flame Leviathan, Mimiron, Yogg-Sarion, Iron Council - the hardmodes were drastically different fights. Each one took a completely different approach to the fight than their corresponding normal modes, and that's what made them unique. The mechanics, mindset, and tactics all changed.

Then came Trial of the Crusader. Hard modes here were just stupid. The fights were almost identical save for maybe 1-2 changes. You approached the fight in the same way and the only thing that changed was the necessity for perfect execution. The standards, however, did not change. The standard for perfect execution in the normal modes are identical to the standard of perfect execution in the hard modes.

Algalon was also a pretty massive flop in a similar way. Most guilds killed Algalon in 5-6 hours of raiding. When I was in Ulduar, my guild spent 7 hours on normal mode Mimiron. We spent 5 hours 51 minutes on Algalon. It seems like the paradigm is way off here... A normal mode fight shouldn't take longer to learn than a gated hard mode fight. While Algalon was hard, the fact that it was so easy to learn is just depressing.

By forcing guilds to use only 5 attemtps per week, they're setting up an idea that the average "good" hard mode raiding guild will down the boss in 25-30 attempts. For many guilds, that's one night of raiding. Now, apply that same standard to the best "hardmode" fights designed in all of raiding - Yogg-Saronx0, Mimiron Hard, M'uru, Kil'Jaeden, even Archimonde. Imagine if these fights had been tuned to be done in 5 weeks with 5 attempts per week. Imagine how much they would need to be nerfed to get to that point.

I think a large reason that Blizzard is moving in this direction is due to their aging core. While we don't have access to the data, Blizzard probably does. It seems likely that their 19-20 year olds that were playing 4 years ago are now turning 23-24, finishing college, starting families, etc. It's likely that the hardmode raiding core in WoW is dying, and so Blizzard is forced to try to compensate. They're keeping players around by reducing the required amount of raiding per week.

It's an interesting question though - how should Blizzard tune the number of hours required to beat a fight? And should they mandate that requirement by limiting attempts.

I think an interesting compromise that someone mentioned on these forums before is to give bosses a buff after each wipe after a certain number. For instance, after your 10th wipe of the week, the boss gets a 2% damage increase that stacks higher with each wipe. After 5 wipes, the boss is doing 10% more damage. Maybe you cap it out at 20%. This would allow the "hardcore" guilds to conceivably keep trying with a hope of completing the encounter, while "casual" raiding guilds could justify their 3 nights/week raiding schedule.

A hard gate with # of attempts or time limit isn't the only way to level the playing field.