WoW has the challenge/group size relationship backwards.

[ro9ue]

I often wonder why I have little to no interest in playing World of Warcraft these days. I was trying to think of examples of content that kept me interested in playing regularly, and I thought of MoP Challenge Modes and things like the Warlock Green Fire quest. Meanwhile in WoD I blazed through the leveling and first round of dungeons + LFR to see the story and never felt compelled to progress much further. Why is this? This is my theory.


WoW's --general-- current model for challenge in relation to group size looks like this:

Solo play: easy
Small group play: easy-medium
Large group play: easy-medium-hard


IMO it should look like this:

Solo play: easy-medium-hard
Small group play: easy-medium
Large group play: easy

Here's why:

When you compound difficulty and challenge ON TOP of social difficulty and challenge like raid schedules and guild stuff, you double up the level of stress tolerance needed for a player to get involved in that content. As it stands now, a player can, totally free of social difficulty participate in the easiest content in the game - they blaze through quests and the normal dungeons effortlessly.

Leveling + normal dungeons:

Content difficulty: 1/3
Social difficulty: 1/3

What's the next step of progression? Dungeons, well you can easily queue for heroics and maybe do some 10man raids, but now you need some sort of guild and might have to participate in schedules and all that.

Content difficulty: 2/3
Social difficulty: 2/3

Last part? Heroics and Mythic raids. A large social difficulty threshold on top of a large content difficulty threshold.

Content difficulty: 3/3
Social difficulty: 3/3


So, at least according to my theory, the reason why there is such a massive drop off here of raiders and people willing to progress beyond a few dungeons and normal raids and stick around, is that those two realms of difficulty in this game work exponentially AGAINST the player.

If the spectrums of difficulty of content and difficulty of social constructs in the game were inversely related, I think that would be more accessible for the player.


To me the perfect setup would be to have things like the Hunter Rhok'delar quest, Warlock Green Fire, Rogue Dagger quest and small group content (like 3 players) reward some of the most powerful items in the game, but to actually require you to progress oppositely through those content areas. Raids would be more fun like getting people together to do a world boss with 2-3 fun mechanics just to get some cool items and stuff once a week. Solo content would have extreme personal challenges that wouldn't require you to be on a schedule and deal with all the social stuff.

But the really money spot would be the small/medium group content. A moderate challenge gradation here where you don't need to necessarily put together a full 20 man raid group, maybe 5-15 players flexible, but would have medium challenges. This would be the "primary" content.

[Super Kami Dende]

I disagree.

There should be Easy-medium-hard at all levels of group size but 5 Man and higher should have more focus on the "hard" than Solo.

I would honestly enjoy if they brought back things like Heroic Scenarios and allowed Solo ones as well.

Chronicles and 1-2man dungeon adventures were a great part of RIFT.

[Xidion1284]

This is exactly the system they have in Final Fantasy XIV. Large-sized raids are easy, and the small scale are brutally difficult. I find the system works a lot better this way and would love if WoW did something similar but doubt they ever will.

[TheWindWalker]

I've been arguing this for a long time now and WoD's announcement was a soul-crushing moment for me. I always felt that having a group small enough that all of you can, and are expected to, talk in the same room leads to far more personal responsibility and discourages the quasi-anonymity one can gain in a 20+ size group by simply blending into "yet another DPS."

A large group should be zerging bosses with a couple people really doing mechanics. A small group should be a surgical strike team wherein everyone has an important role that isn't immediately transferable to more than one other person. Difficulty is not encouraged by "do we have a hunter or boomkin to handle the mechanic? The rest of you maximize your DPS while [that one person] stands off to the side."

[Deleted]

Yeah, let's incentivize EVEN MORE solo play, in an MMO.

You literally are saying, that you want more LFR. With better rewards.

How about, no.

- - - Updated - - -

I've been arguing this for a long time now and WoD's announcement was a soul-crushing moment for me. I always felt that having a group small enough that all of you can, and are expected to, talk in the same room leads to far more personal responsibility and discourages the quasi-anonymity one can gain in a 20+ size group by simply blending into "yet another DPS."

A large group should be zerging bosses with a couple people really doing mechanics. A small group should be a surgical strike team wherein everyone has an important role that isn't immediately transferable to more than one other person. Difficulty is not encouraged by "do we have a hunter or boomkin to handle the mechanic? The rest of you maximize your DPS while [that one person] stands off to the side."

You are not "just another raid dps" if you are doing hard content for a major group ; as personal responsibility _increases_ with higher levels.

If EVERYONE needs to keep 20k dps, for instance, and you don't - It's more pressure in the fact of that every single person need to do this.

it literally is just, harder, to play in a group. And that makes sense ; Cause it takes more skill. And it includes more people.

Welcome to an MMO.

[Wondercrab]

I think there should be a variety of difficulty options available for all types of play, but if it has to be one or the other, then yes, I'd have to agree with the OP.

[Evolixe]

Yes. Lets make things easier some more.

[ro9ue]

Yeah, let's incentivize EVEN MORE solo play, in an MMO.

You literally are saying, that you want more LFR. With better rewards.

How about, no.

Right now they are discouraging players to progress through to the large group system, in fact this new model would encourage casual and fun group play but then have deep character progression for small group and solo content.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes. Lets make things easier some more.

It would actually just make it easier to do harder content. If that makes sense. Instead of just having really easy stuff and then a rapidly increasing ladder of difficulty from the combination of social and mechanical challenges.

[Redroniksre]

I'm on the boat that there should be varied difficulty in all different styles of play, that way if you are a raid loving person, a small group guy, or a solo guy you can progress through the endgame with some dedication. Some people will say solo is easy, and that is because right now it is, but that is on Blizzard, it is not a fact of all games. Really the average raider is only dealing with syncing their abilities with their team, thats it, thats the "difficulty" while it is really only the officers dealing with the roster and raid scheduling. If Blizzard could take the time to do it right, there could be difficult solo content, but so far at least there seems to be no inclination.

[Deleted]

Right now they are discouraging players to progress through to the large group system, in fact this new model would encourage casual and fun group play but then have deep character progression for small group and solo content.

Having both does not equal to discouraging.

Fact is, it literally follows the form of encouraging a certain thing (i.e, enabling it) - Which is offering options.

[munkeyinorbit]

This is exactly the system they have in Final Fantasy XIV. Large-sized raids are easy, and the small scale are brutally difficult. I find the system works a lot better this way and would love if WoW did something similar but doubt they ever will.

Wow already has this at H and N level raiding. The smaller the raid, the harder the raid is. This is fact. Blizzard always gets mechanics wrong when it comes to things like interrupts, proportion of raid going into the "other zone", screwed %s of dps vs heals vs tanks. They try to even it up by dropping HP of adds and such but it doesn't go far enough to make 10 man as easy as 30 manor any other man in between. Arguing otherwise is just going against the facts. At Mythic level blizzard has just gone for the average size. Large enough to expect that the raid will probably carry every class while small enough to still be an easy to manage size. 20man is a compromise but it is till a better way to go than 10 man or 10 man and 25 man.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Nope, its just you who has it backwards.
I understand why you think this make sense but if you actually play WoW you will know why it doesn't.
Raiding is the most rewarding and most challenging content in the game. Are you suggesting you should be able to SOLO mythic Archimonde? Does that make sense to you?

The other thing you are failing to equate is how imbalanced small group content can be. The most challenging small group content is Challenge Mode dungeons, and that CLEARLY illustrates this. The world times DONT BRING A HEALER. DK tanks are mandatory for a dozen reason, enhancement is utterly broken op...
The list can go on, but no point to continue.
The point is obvious - its more difficult to tune and balance small group content because you can't assume every group to have a balanced make up, and this often excludes many specs from viability if not whole classes all together.

Its much easier to make a balanced challenging encounter for 20 people than it is for 5 or even 1, as you are suggesting.

Maybe other games do this, but saying WoW has it backwards only tells me how little you play the game.

[Deleted]

Problem is there are two many classes and specs to properly balance anything but larger groups.

[ro9ue]

Nope, its just you who has it backwards.
I understand why you think this make sense but if you actually play WoW you will know why it doesn't.
Raiding is the most rewarding and most challenging content in the game. Are you suggesting you should be able to SOLO mythic Archimonde? Does that make sense to you?

The other thing you are failing to equate is how imbalanced small group content can be. The most challenging small group content is Challenge Mode dungeons, and that CLEARLY illustrates this. The world times DONT BRING A HEALER. DK tanks are mandatory for a dozen reason, enhancement is utterly broken op...
The list can go on, but no point to continue.
The point is obvious - its more difficult to tune and balance small group content because you can't assume every group to have a balanced make up, and this often excludes many specs from viability if not whole classes all together.

Its much easier to make a balanced challenging encounter for 20 people than it is for 5 or even 1, as you are suggesting.

Maybe other games do this, but saying WoW has it backwards only tells me how little you play the game.

You sound overly aggressive but I'll still respond. I actually played WoW quite a bit, but barely have over the last few years by comparison. I'm not saying you should solo Mythic Archimonde. Lore would have to considered in deciding what should be tackled by a large group and what should be solo/small group. Something like Archimonde in stature would basically become a Doom Lord Kazzak. We also have Ner'zhul as a 5-man boss, so lore importance != # of players required.

As far as the other stuff you mention about balancing for small groups - I guess that could be true considering they can expect a larger group to have every class represented to handle mechanics, but it's just speculation. As far as world-first times - that's a fringe piece of content. Challenge modes for most players are about getting gold, not gaming the system to have a comp to do a world first time.

[Justpassing]

OP should probably play Dark Souls instead of ya'know, an MMO.

[ro9ue]

OP should probably play Dark Souls instead of ya'know, an MMO.

Why? All an MMO means is you inhabit a virtual world with a ton of other people. Obviously I agree with what you're implying: the game should offer good social content.

I just reject that MMOs should ignore the fact that the larger the group size is, the more annoying and challenging the logistics alone are for keeping the group together.

You still have larger groups = but the challenge is diminished to compensate.

And you still have small/medium groups with moderate challenge.

[MoanaLisa]

I disagree with raid content becoming solo but I don't think that's exactly what you were saying or meant to say.

Mostly I agree: 10-man raids (R.I.P), now flex I guess, would probably be more rewarding than 20 or 25 if they were more difficult than the larger sizes. It's less concentration on managing people to get them into a group with a concurrent better focus on getting the smaller group better. It makes sense but that's not the WoW way of course and flex presents its own problems with turning the difficulty level upside down. The exception to that may be Legion's Mythic+ which potentially will be the most difficult group content in the game as you progress up the ladder.

All things being equal though I would prefer the most difficult raid content to be scaled to a smaller, tighter group and give the larger size raid groups a bit more slack.

Very unlikely to happen which is why I intend to spend most of my group time in Legion in Mythic+. In the best of worlds, where players truly look for a challenge, there will be small Mythic+ guilds and teams.

There is value to socially small groups. I think personally more than large raid groups where so much time is spent on group logistics instead of playing.

[Deleted]

I have better explanation of you not having compeling content to do. Multiple difficulty levels. Blizzard segemented game into so many difficulty levels and on paper it looked like players will simply pick difficulty what they want and play that. In reality they all work as progression paths you jump from one to another specialy if you join game later into expansion. Jumpin in difficulty levels isnt compeling to players. Most of us just want to see content so we pick path of least resistance do that then leave the game. Game and raiding specialy would be far more compeling if there would be 1 max 2 difficulty levels for each raid with shared lock out.

[MoanaLisa]

Most of us just want to see content so we pick path of least resistance do that then leave the game.

In reality that's how it works out which gives the lie to the idea that "most" people desire a challenge.

[Thoughtsinchaos]

Nope...

3 man groups getting the most "powerful" items in the game would literally kill raiding. Why go through your "social difficulties" with raiding groups if you're already beating the game with 2 other people? If you thought raiding had a small participation pool now, it would just be flat out depressing with your system.