Raids Are Important, Even If You Never See Them

[Starry Sidekick]

There's this statement that Blizzard and LFR supporters say that really grinds my gears. It usually goes something like this:


"How can we justify making content that only a small fraction of our player base get's to see?"

When people say things like this, in my opinion, they are completely and entirely missing the point of why WoW raiding was so successful in the first place.

The purpose of far off, grand scale goals like these are to pull players along and keep them in the game, giving them a reason to continue playing. And no, the Mythic version of a raid they already saw on easy mode does not count.

As an example, imagine if Sunwell Plateau had 4 difficulty settings. Would it of felt as awesome as it was walking in there for the first time?
Would you have kept playing if you killed Kil'Jaeden in LFR?

Regardless of wether you think it or not, humans are heavily swayed by physical environments, even in a game. Every time you relegate something to a menu, you are removing gameplay. Just look at garrisons. Not only that, but it can cause fairly substantial cognitive dissonance.

Look at these two statements:

"I cleared Black Temple" | "I killed Illidan"

"I cleared the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Black Temple" | "I killed the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Illidan"

Which one is more satisfying and concrete?

When you distance the gameplay from the what is actually consistent within the world, things get dicey. Instead of the raid being hard because it's hard, it's hard because you clicked on your character portrait and changed it to hard.


Here is the point I'm trying to make: Just because people aren't physically in a raid, does not mean that that raid has no effect on how they play the game. So trying to add difficulty levels so people can "see the content" completely ignores the reason why the content is there in the first place.

When you see your guild buddy in full tier 6, that effects they way you play and how you feel.
When the game builds up to a big encounter with a lore-relevant boss in a tough raid, that effects how you play.
When the actual difficulty of a boss matches its lore prescribed power level, that effects how you feel when you wipe on it.

People will keep playing your game if they know there is always content on the horizon that is new and challenging.

The real problem lies in how Blizzard uses their statistics, but that's a whole other thread. Anyway, what are your thoughts?


Sidenote: I am all in favor of Hard Modes Ulduar style, because they require interaction with the game world to activate, which does not disrupt game flow or create cognitive dissonance like a menu does. I also think in a ideal situation where Blizzard did everything I said, there should still be way more chances to get near raid content and utilize those art assets.

[Gadzooks]

I kept running SoO after I saw how Garrosh was dealt with. The content isn't the only reason to run raids, and very, very few run them once, since the entire reward structure is based on running them over and over until RNG pays off and you get the gear you want, and you accumulate tokens/currency over time. On top of that is farming for raid teams, transmog, achievements, pets, mounts, alts, and crafting materials, and Legendaries quest lines.

Blizzard has purposely put those things into the raids, to make them playable longer - and it's fine. It works. They can't just blow out a new, challenging raid every month, to make sure there's alway new content ahead. It would be nice, but beyond the scope of what they can be expected to do.

I don't see a big call for raids to go away anyway, what I see is a call to spend as much time on the rest of the game as they do raids. If raids get 50% of the budget, then questing and PvP, the other parts of the game, get to split the rest and only get 25% each, at best. A better split would be 33% each part.

I don't have a problem with hard modes. I don't have a problem with 3 raid tiers an expansion, or even 4. I just want the same level of care, attention and effort on the rest - and Legion is a major step back towards that. I'm still not going to be playing it, but it's already significantly better designed and balanced than WOD, the expansion that made me quit playing.

So, I think your post is based on a flawed premise - I don't see a big movement for getting rid of raids. I just see a big movement to get rid of LFR, which while I don't agree with, as I used LFR in MOP quite a lot, and enjoyed, I have to admit the reasons why people want to get rid of it are valid. But get rid of raids? No. They have their place in the game, and I'm sure most people would agree.

[Smauldy]

There's also a lot of players that will go "Well, I don't have the time to commit to raiding, and since there's nothing else for me, to do.....guess I'll just cancel".

[JaceDraccus]

I played 1-60 with no clue what a raid even was. I just liked the game. So, personally, I don't see it as 'raids made WoW successful'.

[MoanaLisa]

People will keep playing your game if they know there is always content on the horizon that is new and challenging.

Warlords put the lie to that. Nearly 5 million quit before the last tier of raids was even out.

[Anatos]

Worked for me. Back in Vanilla, when MC was still the only game in town, I remember running through IF and seeing some other tanks I knew decked out in the Might set. I knew I could tank circles around these guys, so why were they so much better geared than me, and seeing content I wasn't?

It gave me the desire to get off my tail, get my buddies organized and find other ppl with similar desires. By the end of Vanilla we were one of the top 3 raid guilds on the server. Seeing those guys with the cool shinies gave me what I needed to put in the work.

Now a days, I have a hard time finding people willing to go through 3 different difficulties of the same content. By the time we hit Mythic in WoD, half my raid team was burnt out and it's become a consistent uphill battle to fill raid slots.

[Reyvah]

That's wonderful if hard raid content is a carrot-on-the-stick that motivates players.
I'd have to question how true that is.

From personal experience:
I played EverQuest exclusively in a small group setting, never setting foot in raid content. I was still able to find challenges, make friends, explore a gigantic world, and have fun. Knowing there were dragons out there? Not a big motivation. I mean anyone who plays RPGs loves a good dragon slaying encounter, but that didn't keep me subscribing. What kept me having fun was the social interaction of helping people (buffing low level players), exploring dangerous dungeons (please let that cleric come back from his disconnect!!!), or seeking out the help of others when a task was insurmountable (I fell down a trap, I respawned naked, and my corpse with all my belongings is now a trophy for a goblin king, help!!!).

From observation of other WoW players and guildmates:
Players will stick rusty nails into their eyeballs every day on dungeon reset if it gave them a gear upgrade. I can't count the number of times people have complained that they are forced to do content that they didn't enjoy, just for the rewards. Ultimately, this shows that a frighteningly large portion of the player base is gear crazed. The hunt for ilvl becomes more important than having fun. From my experience, the best carrot-on-the-stick is a gear upgrade, no matter where it comes from, or what it takes to attain it. You could make the best gear come from pet battles, and while people would complain relentlessly, they'd still dutifully play pet battles to get that gear. It's not specifically raiding that they want, it's the power increase.

For a real life comparison:
Does seeing someone driving a nice BMW make me want to become an investment banker? No, not at all. He may enjoy the power, prestige, rewarding work, and never seeing his family, and more power to him for making that choice. That's not going to influence how I live my life though.

[Queen of Hamsters]

[B]People will keep playing your game if they know there is always content on the horizon that is new and challenging.

]

So why didn't that formula hold true for WoD? HFC was the most difficult, challenging rade to date and yet people didn't stick with playing this lackluster expansion for it.

LFR didn't arise because too many were aspiring to and playing for raids. It came to be because the devs wanted to keep making raid content, but couldn't justify doing it when only 1% ever saw those raids. ERGO, LFR.

If the people that don't want to raid in any shape or form have content aimed at them, they'll keep playing. Those people didn't have content aimed at them in WoD, and thus the expansion saw the biggest drop to date. I understand them, I'd have done the same had I not been a raider. Just as I wouldn't stick with the game is all that was on offer was PVP...I don't like it, I'm not good at it, knowing it's there and that OTHERS are great at it wouldn't do shit in regards to my own enjoyment.

As for raids. As a raider, I want Heroic and Mythic after seeing just what can be done, especially with Mythic. Couldn't care less about the other difficulties personally and to hell with Ulduar's system of "activating" hardmode. I'll take tightly tuned encounters over fights being done with "they'll have to do this in order to activate that" any time of the day.

[Adamas102]

I played 1-60 with no clue what a raid even was. I just liked the game. So, personally, I don't see it as 'raids made WoW successful'.

This ^

I find that too often the hardcore gamer minority projects their views on what makes games fun and fulfilling onto the average gamer. The average gamer is not interested in setting goals or finding validation through overcoming challenges that most other gamers might fail at. I guarantee you that most vanilla WoW players neither knew nor cared about raid progression.

[Starry Sidekick]

I kept running SoO after I saw how Garrosh was dealt with. The content isn't the only reason to run raids, and very, very few run them once, since the entire reward structure is based on running them over and over until RNG pays off and you get the gear you want, and you accumulate tokens/currency over time. On top of that is farming for raid teams, transmog, achievements, pets, mounts, alts, and crafting materials, and Legendaries quest lines.

Blizzard has purposely put those things into the raids, to make them playable longer - and it's fine. It works. They can't just blow out a new, challenging raid every month, to make sure there's alway new content ahead. It would be nice, but beyond the scope of what they can be expected to do.

I don't see a big call for raids to go away anyway, what I see is a call to spend as much time on the rest of the game as they do raids. If raids get 50% of the budget, then questing and PvP, the other parts of the game, get to split the rest and only get 25% each, at best. A better split would be 33% each part.

I don't have a problem with hard modes. I don't have a problem with 3 raid tiers an expansion, or even 4. I just want the same level of care, attention and effort on the rest - and Legion is a major step back towards that. I'm still not going to be playing it, but it's already significantly better designed and balanced than WOD, the expansion that made me quit playing.

So, I think your post is based on a flawed premise - I don't see a big movement for getting rid of raids. I just see a big movement to get rid of LFR, which while I don't agree with, as I used LFR in MOP quite a lot, and enjoyed, I have to admit the reasons why people want to get rid of it are valid. But get rid of raids? No. They have their place in the game, and I'm sure most people would agree.

I don't think people want to get of raids, I think there is a very defunct power curve/fantasy that has been disrupted because of the fact the beating raid does not = beating raid. Also, I love legendary drops and vanity mounts.

And also, to clarify, I don't think they should put any more resources into raids than they are in Legion, but I do think they need to ditch difficulties that are not rooted in the physical game. Brackets are fine, hard modes are fine, just not menu options. I don't even plan on raiding very much in Legion as it is.

- - - Updated - - -

So why didn't that formula hold true for WoD? HFC was the most difficult, challenging rade to date and yet people didn't stick with playing this lackluster expansion for it.

The same boss on a different level of difficulty is not new content. Wether or not its a belief you personally hold, there is a large demographic of people that will not keep playing content after they have played it through once.

With LFR, you let the cookies out of the oven before their done, then people have there fill and leave.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The same boss on a different level of difficulty is not new content. Wether or not its a belief you personally hold, there is a large demographic of people that will not keep playing content after they have played it through once.

With LFR, you let the cookies out of the oven before their done, then people have there fill and leave.

The people raiding Mythic, don't settle for LFR. The people settling for LFR, wouldn't aspire to raid Mythic. Nice try though.
And it may not be new content, but the fights sure as hell do change enough for the boss to require a different approach and feel at times like an entirely different encounter.

I've personally never considered bosses below heroic (normal pre-WoD) or Mythic (Heroic pre-WoD) to be the REAL boss. Fuck settling for watered down versions when you can overcome the bosses at their absolute strongest. Does that SOUND like the attitude of your average LFR player?

[Starry Sidekick]

The people raiding Mythic, don't settle for LFR. The people settling for LFR, wouldn't aspire to raid Mythic. Nice try though.
And it may not be new content, but the fights sure as hell do change enough for the boss to require a different approach and feel at times like an entirely different encounter.

What I am trying to get across is that there is a difference between a raid being difficult and the Mythic version of a raid being difficult. There is a mental divide there that is important to understand.

[ImpTaimer]

Content is important. Challenges are important to inflate content.

Raids (using the fixed game term) are not important. All current Raid instances can exists on a smaller player format. Why can't Normal be 5 people, heroic 10, and mythic 20 people? World bosses can stay 40-ish.

Remember when 5 people mowing down BRF normal before 6.2 even came out? Does that make it any less of a raid?

I played 1-60 with no clue what a raid even was. I just liked the game. So, personally, I don't see it as 'raids made WoW successful'.

Well said.

[Queen of Hamsters]

What I am trying to get across is that there is a difference between a raid being difficult and the Mythic version of a raid being difficult. There is a metal divide there that is important to understand.

... Ok, and what is that supposed to tell us? Did you know that there are guilds struggling with downing Normal HFC? Guilds stuck at Heroic bosses? Guilds that can't get past Mythic Gorefiend?

What difficulty of a raid is challenging, depends on the team. Even LFR isn't a surefire win if the teams are bad enough.

[Deleted]

Look at these two statements:

"I cleared Black Temple" | "I killed Illidan"

"I cleared the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Black Temple" | "I killed the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Illidan"

Which one is more satisfying and concrete?

For 97 or 98% of paying customers the actual options were:


"I didn't clear Black Temple" | "I didn't kill Illidan"

"I cleared the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Black Temple" | "I killed the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Illidan"

People will keep playing your game if they know there is always content on the horizon that is new and challenging.

Wildstar says hi...

[Queen of Hamsters]

"I cleared Black Temple" | "I killed Illidan"

"I cleared the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Black Temple" | "I killed the Mythic/Heroic/LFR version of Illidan"
[/I]

Since I know about the struggles of say Method, I'd say Mythic Archimonde holds a hell of a lot more satisfaction and is quite concrete.
Just add the difficulty in front of the boss and it's as clear as day. Talk about trying to create problems where there are none.

[MoanaLisa]

The same boss on a different level of difficulty is not new content. Whether or not its a belief you personally hold, there is a large demographic of people that will not keep playing content after they have played it through once.

Whether or not a fight is content is an opinion. I tend to think that they are. You don't and that's OK. An interesting thing to think about is a second boss in some different raid entirely that has most of the same mechanics of another boss. The fight is largely the same but the surrounding environment and many other things could be different. I suspect most would call that new content. They might be wrong about that.

As to the once-and-done theory, before LFR and mythic there was normal and heroic. There wasn't a lot of discussion about normal ruining heroic for anyone. Some of course but nothing like now. So I don't really buy into that. Your post presumes that LFR keeps people from running higher levels of difficulty when all of the evidence that Blizzard has ever provided says that the audience for LFR didn't raid much previous to its appearance and has no desire to move up afterwards. So while the idea sounds nice, there's little-to-no real evidence to back it up. Never mind that raiding generally is receiving a lot of pushback from those that prefer to see another set of dungeons or something similar during an expansion. That sort of thing has gone missing completely since LFR has been a thing.

It's inescapable to look at the actual progression of events and statements and not come to the conclusion that LFR largely exists to serve Blizzard's developer's desires to make raids. And keeping a lot of people in those much larger raids has starved the development of content like post-launch dungeons. This is just a fact. I'm not sure the game is better for it.

[Starry Sidekick]

I played 1-60 with no clue what a raid even was. I just liked the game. So, personally, I don't see it as 'raids made WoW successful'.

I don't just think raids made wow successful, and I was the same way. I did 1-10 without knowing there were talents, 1-40 not knowing there were professions, and didn't raid until way after that. But having that those tough raids looming in the distance gave me something to work towards in the long term, along with all the other things you can do in wow.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Guys, there is nothing to discuss here. Raids are the main focal point of the video game.
They are doing their best to make PVP of parallel relevance but group based PVE is what the game is all about.
If you need to write all this to try to convince people (or even yourself) they just don't play the game for the right reasons.
The raids are the pinnacle of the video game's content.
You should want to do them. You will make the strongest relationships you could ever have in a video game along the way.

The fact that a "small fraction" of the population only does them proves how backwards this game's community is.
Its like buying FIFA and just hanging out on the main menu.
Go play the game and complete the content that they spend months creating with your 2 dozen close friends. You wont regret it.

[potis]

Its the same god damn game.

All that changed is the information of the game.

Everyone knows exactly and every single little thing before the game is out, and if someone struggles 99% they go to wowhead.

The game is exactly the same it was, QoL changes were added but the core of the game is the same.

LEVEL TO MAX LEVEL-->DUNGEONS-->RAID-->WAIT FOR PATCH AND DO DIFFERENT STUFF MEANWHILE-->Raid the new patch-->Back to Leveling when next expansion releases. in and endless loop.

This is the WESTERN MMO GENRE.

Even the last casual has too much info in their hands compared to Vanilla/TBC, all this started exactly when Datamining started.

There are simply too much information about anything, you dont have to discover anything..Its an 11 year old game already.