How to reward 25 man raids for "logistical effort"

[Deleted]

Yes, exactly like the WoW Devs designed it and the vast majority of the playerbase experiences it.

Regardless of what fights your guild struggled with on 25m, 10m is unarguably harder to execute. Check my sig for details, or maybe just try a few 10hm before you get all geared up while coasting through 25s.

The only problem is that your sig is not true for heroic mode 25 man raiding it is however for normal mode raiding. But you have probably not tried any 25 man heroic raiding and if you did it was probably in an ICC gdkp run with the 30% buff.

[Verain]

Espe, the mechanical differences were NEVER implemented evenly. The blue post on that is willfully skipping over several fights where this was not true. For instance, in most of firelands, this was not true. There were several mechanics that were "one player fails, wipe it", and there were MORE of those things going out in 25. And the opposite is also important- getting the tendons down is something where in a 10, everyone is trying super hard because their dps matters so much. In a 25, with diffuse responsibility, people are more likely to say "well, I did pretty good. I COULD spend 15k on an upgrade, but look, we aren't really that close, and my dps is just a drop in the bucket, so..." In a 10, you buy the item because you are a bigger piece of that. In this case, making a player own something makes them more damned likely to actually DO IT!!!

I think that blue post is discussing raiding in general, or how they intend it to be. Maybe a lot of reg modes? I don't know. Remember, it only takes one tier to break a 25 man, one tier of wildly better rewards in 10 than 25s. And we've had more than one!

[Tastyfish]

Espe, the mechanical differences were NEVER implemented evenly. The blue post on that is willfully skipping over several fights where this was not true. For instance, in most of firelands, this was not true. There were several mechanics that were "one player fails, wipe it", and there were MORE of those things going out in 25. And the opposite is also important- getting the tendons down is something where in a 10, everyone is trying super hard because their dps matters so much. In a 25, with diffuse responsibility, people are more likely to say "well, I did pretty good. I COULD spend 15k on an upgrade, but look, we aren't really that close, and my dps is just a drop in the bucket, so..." In a 10, you buy the item because you are a bigger piece of that. In this case, making a player own something makes them more damned likely to actually DO IT!!!!

Agree with this here.

[Deleted]

The extra effort is required only to find warm bodies.

The actual execution of fights are much, much harder on 10m. If you can't understand why the people who make this game and most of the playerbase agree with me, I guess you never will.

You are reported for nitpicking a line to misslead people!
Your Sig mister, is a part of what the dev said and the discussion on the matter WAS LFR!!!

Here is the full thing so anyone can see what a fake, sorry excuse of a poster you are!

Q:The new LFR system you have in WoW now seems like a great way for people who dont have alot of time to donate to raiding guild environments a chance to see content that was most of the time closed to them, however I'm not a big fan of 25man raids. Is there any plans to add a 10man choice to the LFR system?
GhostCrawler: We think 25 works better for Raid Finder. The ratios of DPS to non DPS more matches the player population and there is less risk of getting an unviable group. In 25s you can afford to have a few deaths and you can even pull if you're backfilling a few players. Both really make you stop in your tracks on 10s. In 25, it's easier to fade back into the group if you're still not 100% confident in what you're doing. In 10s, it's harder to be a wallflower.

So basically you snapshotted a part of the thing that Ghostcrawler said, while he was actually talking about FACEROLABLE content that you can 15 man!!!

GG, go hide in a cave or something!!!

And regarding what Ghostcrawler actually said regarding REAL difficulty you may read this to educate your self!

"Q: Sure, personal responsibility is high in 10 mans but its offset by logistics of organization and spacial requirements. I still think that you're looking at it fairly biased. Just as many 25 man players look down at 10 mans just the same
A: 10s do have more individual responsibility. 25s have more logistical problems. Overall, I'd say 25s have worked out to be harder. It's subjective for sure. I have seen a lot of 25s scale down to 10 and be able to beat a boss that stumped them."

What a joke really!!!

[Verain]

Actually I think my time here is mostly wasted. All other guild leadership gets what I'm saying, and I'm not going to convince anyone who didn't like / couldn't hack 10s, because they are just making arguments because they don't want their equal loot for less effort to go away.

And I don't really either at this point. Switching back to 25s would be the most disruptive thing they could do to the raiding community. They would really need to be convinced that it would be better for everyone, and I just don't think it matters enough. The game became a 10 man raiding game, just as we predicted. Switching it back would make create such social drama that I can't even predict what would happen. Doing something halfassed, like gear half a tier up, will also be disruptive. The most they could get away with would be starting the 25 man gear with one or both "upgrade levels" from valor, and even that would tick people off.

But other games should take this to heart if they want to implement raids.

---------- Post added 2012-11-20 at 05:08 PM ----------

You are reported for nitpicking a line to misslead people!

Good catch sir! I thought that line didn't make much sense, and was only true on a little bit of content. That he took it out of context for why LFR should be 25s makes a lot of sense.

[Espe]

Alright guys, the title of this thread is How to reward 25 man raids for "logistical effort"

The reality of the situation is that 25m raiders are already rewarded for their "logistical effort" by having a much more forgiving raiding experience and receiving more loot per person than 10m raiders. That sounds like more then enough reward for me.

For raiders who want a real challenge, there is 10hm. Yeah, it is easier to get 10 people together than 25, but by raiding 10m you get to see what you can really do against the hardest content in game.

For you 25m raiders who just want to coast to easy epics, you get more loot, more battle rezes and an all-around more forgiving raiding experience.

That is simply how the current game has been designed. I think it works just fine, though I wouldn't mind a little extra reward for executing harder content. Not enough to start a complaint thread on a third-party site, mind you. But it would be nice

As for my sig, it speaks for itself. The question may have been about LFR, I don't know. The point is this: he is clearly speaking about 10 vs. 25 in general. Just read my sig.

[Heathy]

It's too situational, arguing which is harder 10s or 25s, first it depends on the fight, but it also comes down to the fact that, they are completely different raids, one is actually balanced around 10 ppl, and the other is balanced around 25 ppl.

25 is probably harder simply because it harder to get an extra 15 ppl into a raid, when you could get 5 more ppl and just make 3 10 mans. the difficulty doesn't have to be tied to game mechanics, just simple logistics and ppls willingness to form bigger groups and forego the fact that the loot is identical. 10 mans tend to be quicker, the scaling of health usually makes 25 fights last a bit longer. where as a 10 man boss is dead in 3 minutes its probably more like 5 or 6 for the 25man version. depending on other factors ofc.

the incentive for loot should exist in 25's, if a guild is happy with doing 10's but wants the better loot, is there anything really stopping them from getting more players to expand their horizons.. for fuck sake in the golden age of raiding you either had 40, or you didn't raid, simple as. then it was you have 20 or you don't raid simple as, now its simply a matter of everything being trivial and ppl wanting the best they can get for their time and effort, if there is more effort involved in forming a 25 man there should be compensation otherwise why have a 25 at all. if accessibility is all that matters.

[Oxyra]

Oh here we go @Espe.
Here's a direct quote from Ghostcrawler's twitter.
You can't get much more direct from Blizz than this.
"Overall, I'd say 25s have worked out to be harder." - Ghostcrawler 2012

Keep going though.

[aeluna]

I personally think the solution would be this. 25 raids should be a separate entity from 10's. The balancing of difficulty and risk/reward is something Blizzard is incapable of doing. Create boss fights/raids that require 25 with no 10 alternative. To achieve success the raid would have to be fairly short but both difficult and rewarding. Right now I'm thinking of Gruul's Lair. The trash was minimal and could be accomplished quick once the raid understood their role properly but it wasn't just a walk in and free loot for a long time. There were lots of important roles in that fight, not just your standard raid mechanic fight.

As far as tier balance goes, this raid would not offer tier and if it did it would only be iconic pieces like shoulders/helms. The raid would offer ilevel loot of 10HM but only select pieces. So people who want 25's can get their fix, people who dislike 25's don't have to dislike it for that long. It will offer more quick raid creation because of the simplicity of the level design (it'll be short) where the complexity would only be in boss mechanics and organization and formulation of a 25 raid group.

[Deleted]

Original post:

I currently raid 10man because there are no competative 25mans left on my server (except 1 polish only guild), many people are in the same boat as me and alot of my old guildies went x-realm to continue 25man raiding. I would happily sacrifice progression to return to 25man raiding, there is a much greater sense of accomplishment defeating a boss as a bigger group and many more logistical problems can arise such as correct formation of ice blocks on sindragosa (randomly picked an example out of the hat) I see no problem reverting back to the old system providing these conditions are met-

A: 25man raiding is made harder strategically (it often is anyway due to the nature of organising 25 players), this would be done at design stage.
B: 25man raiding rewards higher Ilvl loot
C: 10man zoning forces a reduction in Ilvl on 25man loot- no facerolling of 10man content for 25s
D: Separate the Achievements again, especially realm firsts, they are two different forms of competition, don't put them in the same boat

This would achieve 3 things -

Provide a greater challenge strategically for 25man raiders (the part of 25man raiding I used to relish).
Provide no incentive to drop to 10man from 25 (lower ilvl rewards wont help you that much in 25man and maintaining the combined lockout it would give 25man no real reason to raid 10 except cheese progression and hinder it later on in the tier)
No punishment for 10man guilds, they wont need the extra Ilvl to raid 25man and will still face a comparable challenge to 25man

As many others have stated I think the 15/20man idea is the "worst of both worlds" solution.

I hope post hasn't come across as a flaming, but rather as a well constructed counter argument that demonstrates the shortcomings of your idea. Sorry, but I really don't think your idea is at all fool-proof, and it pretty much accommodates only a very small minority of raiders.

Not at all, I think you just misunderstood my post a little and I'll clarify:

So let me get this straight: "Many" people on your realm want to raid 25 but can't because there are no 25 mans on your server? That makes no sense. If there were indeed "Many" such people, you could form a 25 man raiding guild and just do it. Or maybe by many you mean only a few (not enough to form a 25 man group). Out of the thousands of people on your server. In other words a very small proportion...

Many of my old guildies xfered to other realms to raid 25man, there are many old 25man raiders on my realm, unfortunately they are all in competing guilds and no successful guild merge ever happened between what used to be the old top-5 25man guilds... they simply devolved into multiple 10man guilds, which is what the subject this post is ultimately about...

Your example of Sindragosa refers to a raid in which 25 man was actively designed to be harder than 10 man, so it doesn't count. It is very easy to design an encounter such that it is objectively harder in 10 man than in 25 man. The real trick (and where Blizzard don't always get it perfect) is in balancing the difficulty exactly.

Perfect balance is what I don't want to see, I ENJOY the added difficult an encounter can present by having to account for extra players... Try to think of it like this - I would rather do a 2500 piece jigsaw than a 500 piece jigsaw, now, you could make the 500 piece jigsaw have lots of areas of sky to make it of similar relative difficulty to the 2500 piece jigsaw, but for me the 2500 piece jigsaw is still more fun.

The Sindragosa example was to highlight the option for increased complexity and not necessary increased difficulty (by bumping numbers here and there) I would like to see in my proposed suggestion to an alternate raid system. You cannot make a 10man encounter as complex as a 25man encounter due to the limitations a 10man has from a design point of view...

In other words your assertion that 25 man raiding is inherently more difficult than 10 man is flawed. It is design choices which determine how easy/hard an encounter is, regardless of raid size.

As I said above, 25man allows for a more complex raid design at the grass roots stage. This is undenyable, and is the reason why the old model worked, because on some fights (not all) the complexity (not difficulty or gear check) was harder to overcome on 25man when the two raiding formats were still separate.

Why is this important to you? Are you saying that encounter difficulty is more important to you than actual number of players

Encounter complexity yes. I have not come across one encounter so far in MoP that is difficult through complexity rather than being a gear-check, and I think the design limitations 10man has have transferred unfortunately to the 25mans, limiting the possibility for fantastic design.

Why is this important to you? Are you saying that loot is more important to you than actual number of players?

Not to me no, but this thread is about incentivising 25man raiding... And the increased Ilvl in my proposed design model provides incentive without damaging 10man raiding.

Why is this important to you? Are you saying special recognition is more important to you than actual number of players

Yes. If the encounters are designed to be a tougher challenge execution-wise, I intend to receive recognition for overcoming them. That's not to detract from 10man accomplishments - as I have said previously, a challenge designed specifically for 25 players to overcome has much more potential for depth and could provide a greater challenge; when all the factors are simply scaled up from a 10man design model the logistical challenge is limited for the sake of "balance".

I don't see how any of the changes you have recommended make 25 man raiding more challenging than it currently is. Rather, it sounds like you want to dumb down 10 man raiding in order to make 25 man raiding stand out as something special. You don't actually care about how many people are in your raid group, you simply want to distinguish yourself from the masses.

I want the old 25man format back, where the challenge is in planning and tweaking and min-maxing to overcome the encounters, 10mans can never be as complex in my opinion because you only have 10 players, this is the nature of the beast.

I disagree. What you are proposing is not about removing incentives to drop to 10 man. It's about adding incentives to do 25 man, incentives which have nothing to do with the number of players in the raid group, but appeal to a bunch of other things that would have people running 25 man in spite of the fact that they would rather be running 10 man.

Incentivising 25mans is what this thread is about, and I don't see how it would affect people who wish to raid in a 10man format.

There is a contradiction here. In point A above, you require that "25man raiding is made harder strategically". So therefore the 10 man challenge won't be comparable to the 25 man challenge.

So overall, 10 man raiders will have to accept that they are second rate citizens, completing less challenging content, and have to accept getting inferior gear, achievements, titles and mounts.

And they would feel that way because that is the way you want them to feel, because you can't be raiding a superior format without the other being inferior, which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing (I don't have any problem with heroic raiders distinguishing themselves from normal mode raiders).

The problem with this is, however, that you are forcing people into the second rate citizen category based not on skill, or commitment, or effort, but instead because of the fact that, for whatever reason, they prefer raiding in a smaller group.

True, but with the shoe on the other foot - why should people who want to raid 25man and tackle the greater challenge it could potentially present be forced to raid a scaled-up version of 10man content for the sake of balance?

[Deleted]

**Bait**

What you fail to realize is that most 25 man heroic raiders have tried 10 man heroic at some point and time so we know what we are talking about. You on the other hand with heavy bias towards 10 man, I doubt you have ever tried 25 man heroic raiding.

[Oxyra]

As for 10mans being harder.
Paragon and Method are about the same level.
10man Will of the Emperor Heroic took Paragon ~20 tries. Method and most other 25man guilds 100 tries.

Continue?

[Verain]

For raiders who want a real challenge, there is 10hm. Yeah, it is easier to get 10 people together than 25, but by raiding 10m you get to see what you can really do against the hardest content in game.

Right, but a hardmode guild will run hardmodes however it can. And it can always run them faster in 10s than 25s! Only the top guilds are immune to this, and can actually see 25h modes, which are > 10h modes in difficulty over the course of most fights.

So saying to a guild that has 17 hard mode raiders and 11 reg mode raiders "you can run 10h", that's lame. Sure, it's what most guilds actually did, but it's still fucking lame.

That is simply how the current game has been designed. I think it works just fine, though I wouldn't mind a little extra reward for executing harder content. Not enough to start a complaint thread on a third-party site, mind you. But it would be nice

Wait, are you deluded enough to think 10h is harder than 25h, in general?

Ok, definitely out of this thread.

[Heathy]

having 2 separate raid sizes was great initially when there were only a handful of raids, when you couldn't get 40 you got 20 and went and did aq or zg, now its 10 and 25, blizzard won't go back to the original method because even for a rose tinted glasses fellow like myself, they want EVERYONE to SEE IT ALL and having specific raids at specific sizes is counter to that goal.

its exactly why the removed the higher ilvl loot from the 25 mans in the first place 'all the 10 man raiders are missing out, they want the best loot aswell' ... recruit 15 more ppl then ffs.

[Espe]

Keep going though.

Yes, but the question was about logistics. Yes, it is clearly harder to get 25 people together than 10.

Once you step into that instance though... well, read my sig.

Couldn't have said it more clearly if I had designed the game myself

[Deleted]

What you fail to realize is that most 25 man heroic raiders have tried 10 man heroic at some point and time so we know what we are talking about. You on the other hand with heavy bias towards 10 man, I doubt you have ever tried 25 man heroic raiding.

Heroic raiders still aren't relevent when talking about popularity issues.

If you want 25 man to be more popular, then the easiest way is to dumb them down to LFR level for normal level loot.

[Deleted]

Things should be like IRL, reward = effort. 25 requires more effort and thus should be rewarded like that.

[Deleted]

As for 10mans being harder.
Paragon and Method are about the same level.
10man Will of the Emperor Heroic took Paragon ~20 tries. Method and most other 25man guilds 100 tries.

Continue?

HC modes still nothing to do with popularity discussions. Most raiders don't even complete normal modes until the debuff/nerfs happen.

[scadouche]

Yes, but the question was about logistics. Yes, it is clearly harder to get 25 people together than 10.

Once you step into that instance though... well, read my sig.

Couldn't have said it more clearly if I had designed the game myself

You are derailing the topic with your nonsense. Just stop.

[Radalek]

Yes, exactly like the WoW Devs designed it and the vast majority of the playerbase experiences it.

Regardless of what fights your guild struggled with on 25m, 10m is unarguably harder to execute. Check my sig for details, or maybe just try a few 10hm before you get all geared up while coasting through 25s.

I did both 10 and 25 heroic this tier and in previous tiers and I can tell you when our alts go to 10 man heroic it looks like a different world out there. Relaxed, stress free, less dps requirements, less responsibility raiding.