What exactly are the arguments in favor of having 4 raid difficulties?

[Deleted]

I haven't heard any good ones so I was wondering if there even are any.

To have diversity catered to any level of players. But since there is the need to complain, some will always complain .. even now some cry that LFR is pointless (which was the intent) and that mythic is too hard (which again was the intent)
All in all, an attempt to please the community, which is an impossible thing to do.

[Leih]

You don't understand the term. There is no way in hell that you, guy who is a casual e rper with your post history, is a top notch top 100 raider.

The Joke
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Your Head

Anyway, Wrath, when I last raided super hardcore, came out 9 years ago, it's been a long time. I remember Naxxramas and C'thun. I cleared Sunwell before 3.0. I have the Grand Crusader title from Wrath. You won't find that in my post history really, I didn't hang out in MMO-C then Not a guy either but that's not super relevant to things.

[Pengekaer]

Flex is here. It's called Normal.

Ah, I see.
Then its just LFR needing to get snuffed out (Sry :P ). Its existance never outright ruined it for me, as I never did LFR (It took all energy of my every cell to just try it, it was so shit), but it did of course hog a fair amount of resources from the developer team.

Another model I was a fan of was the old Ulduar hardmode thing. Make the first 7-8 bosses (up to and including the Cat Lady/Hodir) kind of easy in difficulty. Casual guilds could do them, even with limited practice (I know, I've been there) and still get a shot at the harder bosses too. The last bosses, Hardmodes and Algalon was present for what we today would call Mythic players. It was IMO brilliant, and non-lazy design.
Hardmodes was a clever tactic because it offered advanced players the option of being challenged, even at the early bosses which casuals would just do easy mode. And it was all distilled into one tier/difficulty.

[Shakou]

The argument is that producing 4 completely different raid instances, one for each target segment, would be less profitable. So all art assets are reused and the experience tailored through dmg/health and mechanics.

I do wonder how they are able to maintain the game even on the level they are with so many fewer subscribers, but then again I can see that a company like Blizzard is cutting costs wherever possible, so they can lose subscribers and still make revenue, even a profit with Blizzcon tickets, in-game promotions, store only items and so forth.

[Servasus]

Dude, there are not a significant amount of normal mode only guilds. It is a very tiny % of the raiding guild scene. I didn't say these things didn't exist. Just because you're arguing about something I'm not even talking about doesn't mean what I'm saying isn't worth discussing it just means you need to get out. This clearly isn't the thread for you. You're basically having a discussion with the thread headline and not even participating in what was being discussed.

What discussion? The part where people disagree with you and every other post you tell them "nuh uh you're wrong!"

None of your retorts even hold water. There are MANY people, as guilds, running Normal, and a lot of them only run normals and maybe dabble a bit in the first half of heroic later on after they are geared. Normal mode is what Blizzard aims to be the friends and family guild mode, as well as the pug mode for people who want to do something semi-organized but not have to necessarily put in a ton of time. Do I even have to explain to you the purpose of Heroic and Mythic because I feel like even a vegetable could figure that out. LFR serves its purpose as the mode the most casual of casual raiders can partake in. Normal mode is friend and family guilds that want to check out the raids on something a little more organized than LFR. Heroic is for the average raider who wants to progress the tier on something slightly challenging AND they have the time to commit to it. Mythic obviously is bleeding edge. The people who have tons of time to invest and have the skill necessary to succeed. Or at least think they do.

Again. It's a spectrum. A gradient. The more difficulty options there are, the more people can and will partake. Take out normal mode and you're basically saying fuck you to the people who aren't skilled enough to raid on that level. The raid would still be tuned around the same skill level and that person would not meet those standards so there would be very few guilds or groups that would allow them to stick around long enough.

The hilarious part is that you keep telling everyone else that no one has presented you with an argument you consider "good," but you're the one that has put forth virtually nothing constructive. Just tons of anecdotal bullshit and some word semantics. There are tons of replies in this thread alone explaining in stupidly excruciating detail what each mode is catered for, and you are just putting your hands over your eyes and acting like it's not even there because you don't want to be proven wrong.

Just because you don't partake in a raid difficulty doesn't mean there aren't guilds out there who do. Check warcraftlogs. Worldoflogs. Even wowheroes if that's still a thing could probably show you just how many guilds fall into the normal mode category.

As for your retarded as fuck comment about "What planet are you on where there are not significantly less people even playing now than there were before?"

Again, HOW DO YOU HAVE THIS INFO? Blizzard doesn't release sub numbers. Large waves of subs come in during the .0 patches and dissipate as time goes on, but according to the last quarterly update from Activision, Legion is doing better than WoD. We have no actual numbers obviously anymore but they still tell you how it's doing comparatively to the previous expansion title. Better could mean anywhere from slightly better than to millions more. You don't have that information though so you literally do not get to comment on how many people are playing.

"Oh but all of my guild and friends stopped playing so NO ONE IS PLAYING!"

"Oh I don't personally raid and my guild doesn't personally raid normal mode SO THERE ARE NO NORMAL MODE GUILDS!"

This is what you sound like. The sun and the moon don't revolve around you are your "intuition" or your feelcraft. According to actual logging sites, there are many normal mode logs, and if you check out a number of the more current ones you will find guilds that don't log heroic because they don't do heroic. This late in the tier, heroic and mythic guilds aren't usually running normal mode because they have no need for either the gear nor the legendaries BLP.

I just don't know. People have given you reasons and you're actively choosing to ignore them so all I can really say is this: Blizzard is the only one who knows how many people raid each difficulty. YOU DO NOT. If Blizzard's data is telling them enough guilds are raiding normal mode to keep it a prevalent raiding difficulty, then they have every prerogative to keep putting resources into it. If that bothers you somehow because you think it's segregating raiders, then all I can say about that is anyone who wants to raid heroic will already be raiding heroic. Getting rid of normal mode is not going to entice anyone current normal mode raiders into heroic. They will just leave or stop raiding. Again...if they wanted to raid with you in heroic mode they would literally already be doing so.

[Pengekaer]

The only argument that really matters. It gives the illusion of more content while costing Blizz substantially less to maintain.

This is the same argument for Normal/Heroic/Mythic/Mythic+ dungeons.

Most dungeons, and pretty much all raids, can be done much faster than in the past (indeed, Mythic+ is based upon that concept). They no longer have to worry about creating a challenging, growing experience over the course of dungeons and raids, you create fewer and smaller areas with a difficulty slider.

I do think this is the reason that you have a big influx of players with expansions and patches, with a subsequent dive in subs as many people realize they are doing the same thing they just completed with a mild increase in difficulty to get the exact same gear they already have with slightly better stats. In any large industry, this is called a self-inflicted wound.

Great insight, I fully agree.
The lower sub numbers could be due to player base getting older (a valid explanation) but I think it may also have to do with what you just said. The whole titanforging thing doesn't help.

[Deleted]

but it did of course hog a fair amount of resources from the developer team.

Wot? LFR is the very reason there even are raids. And how much resource could it take to apply a 50% modifier on everything?

[Deleted]

The only argument that really matters. It gives the illusion of more content while costing Blizz substantially less to maintain.

This is the same argument for Normal/Heroic/Mythic/Mythic+ dungeons.

Most dungeons, and pretty much all raids, can be done much faster than in the past (indeed, Mythic+ is based upon that concept). They no longer have to worry about creating a challenging, growing experience over the course of dungeons and raids, you create fewer and smaller areas with a difficulty slider.

I do think this is the reason that you have a big influx of players with expansions and patches, with a subsequent dive in subs as many people realize they are doing the same thing they just completed with a mild increase in difficulty to get the exact same gear they already have with slightly better stats. In any large industry, this is called a self-inflicted wound.

I don't think the intent is to give the illusion of more content. Mythic+ is simply there so that dungeons remain relevant through the expansion. LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic are there in an attempt to have content available for any type of players, which became an option as most people don't have the required skill and/or time available to dedicate to a mythic only difficulty level (remember when most people did not have the luxury to enter raids like BT/Hyjal/Sunwell outside of trash farm?).

[Servasus]

I do wonder how they are able to maintain the game even on the level they are with so many fewer subscribers, but then again I can see that a company like Blizzard is cutting costs wherever possible, so they can lose subscribers and still make revenue, even a profit with Blizzcon tickets, in-game promotions, store only items and so forth.

You literally DO NOT HAVE this information!

[Bisque]

Who decides what is a "good" reason? Is it the OP, is the OP the arbiter of what is "good" or does "good" differ from person to person?

[Servasus]

Who decides what is a "good" reason? Is it the OP, is the OP the arbiter of what is "good" or does "good" differ from person to person?

In his mind, yes. Your royal highness has spoken, and no good reasons have been given for Normal mode raiding to exist, so let's get rid of it, by decree of the King of What is Good and What is Not!

[Temp name]

Letting more people experience content at a level they're comfortable playing at

[Kathranis]

I do think this is the reason that you have a big influx of players with expansions and patches, with a subsequent dive in subs as many people realize they are doing the same thing they just completed with a mild increase in difficulty to get the exact same gear they already have with slightly better stats. In any large industry, this is called a self-inflicted wound.

Whereas in the past people did the exact same thing they just completed without a mild increase in difficulty to get the exact same gear they already have without slightly better stats?

I don't really see how the old system was any better. And you can argue that they had more dungeons before, but the older content was much more simple from a design perspective, and they achieved the larger number of dungeons by reusing the same assets across multiple wings.

I doubt it would have been especially difficult to do with Legion what they did with Burning Crusade. They could have easily had three Black Rook Hold dungeons, three Eye of Azshara dungeons, three Neltharion's Lair dungeons, three Halls of Valor dungeons. They could easily have populated them all with bosses that would have wound up being mechanically similar -- if not identical -- to other bosses we've already killed, because at a certain point they're just mixing and matching the same ingredients.

I'm not sure people would actually accept that dungeon design philosphy these days. In fact, I'm pretty sure they'd be accused of being lazy and rehashing content.

[xcess]

There arent any bad reasobs to have 4 difficulties, you take obe away then it just means people will play less

[Deleted]

Letting more people experience content at a level they're comfortable playing at

But that let's nubs raid and so for some reason OP's server population decreased, whch means he can't be world first anymore, and others can see his raids anyway so it's bad.

[Kathranis]

I too think 4 is abit much.

My suggestion would be something like this:

Remove LFR
reduce normal difficulty and make it queueable.
Keep Heroic and Mythic as is. With 20 or 15 ilvl difference between each difficulty.

I think this is fair, personally. Normal seems a bit superfluous in the current scheme, and LFR has been way undertuned for too long.

Of course, if they ditched a mode we'd have fewer color variants for new armor sets...

[Temp name]

I too think 4 is abit much.

My suggestion would be something like this:

Remove LFR
reduce normal difficulty and make it queueable.
Keep Heroic and Mythic as is. With 20 or 15 ilvl difference between each difficulty.

What you're saying is to remove normal, not LFR..

[schwarzkopf]

It's more like LFR is for tourists, normal is easy, heroic is medium and mythic is hard.

The stats don't agree with you....

[shaunika123]

so it's not exclusive to just one demographic?

if there were only 1 difficulty it would either be too hard or too easy for most people

Because people would whinge if they removed Mythic raiding I guess.

And logically speaking Mythic raiding would be the first to go.

you do realize that's not how it works right?

just because it's the hardest and thus has the least amount of players doing it, doesnt mean it's the best logical one to toss out

that's like saying "well challenger league in lol is only 200 players per region out of millions, so might as well remove it"

if you remove the motivation to become better, then you remove the motivation to play from a lot of people

the easiest answer to remove would be either normal

since it's already basically HC, maybe you could make HC slightly easier (but not normal level)


or LFR just because it goes against everything raiding stands for, but once you open that bottle it's not easy to close, so that wont happen unfortunately

Wot? LFR is the very reason there even are raids. And how much resource could it take to apply a 50% modifier on everything?

you mean the system that came out in 2011 is responsible there being raiding since 2004

that's interesting

[Shakou]

The Joke
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Anyway, Wrath, when I last raided super hardcore, came out 9 years ago, it's been a long time.

Oh I got the joke, but do you get that it's obvious that you're not and have never been a hardcore player? Just because you were (or say you were) in some top guilds doesn't mean anything, that does not give you some kind of clout. I could be in Method right now, they will invite anyone that's cool and wants to be a part of the team and help out, you know that right? Doesn't mean you're an all star player. What you did is the equivalent of name dropping. Also WOTLK was released in Nov 2008. It is Sep 2017.

Also, the internet has a search function. You got Grand Crusader on February 23'rd 2010, Months after ICC was released. Grats on being part of the reason why Blizzard removed server first titles.

And I'm sorry but nothing you have said so far is impressive or gives your opinion more weight, because your opinion stated was essentially "What blizzard does is right, I like it, and I don't agree with you". And the fact you're trying to run around talking like you were some srs hardcore top 100 raider when you fished for a realm to get server first TOGC well after ICC was released is the real joke here.