Are barriers to mythic raiding worth it?

[Blackmist]

Be careful of what you ask for, you might just get it and more.
The recent 'social groups' feature that Blizzard introduce in their new battlenet client, that could be what 'guilds' will be in the future. A 'social group' will basically be a guild that can span multiple WoW Servers and even across all the Blizzard games. They might introduce in-game support in WoW in the future where as long as all the players are in the same 'Social Group' they can go into the same mythic raid.

Sounds good to me. And add to that Lockouts should be loot lockouts only; get shot of the archaic Mythic lockout system. Yeah, people can funnel loot to mains in a big enough guild, but who honestly cares outside the first week for the world first? Why should the needs of the top 3 guilds get to determine what happens to all the rest?

[Pijips]

Make Mythic flex. They can balance it they're just lazy and use it as an excuse.

Not going to happen without it either being impossible or a joke. ToS early days were bad enough, if it went any more out of line it'd just be a joke.

[muto]

Not going to happen without it either being impossible or a joke. ToS early days were bad enough, if it went any more out of line it'd just be a joke.

Outside of Avatar and KJ, ToS is already a joke. All the other bosses are a cake walk. Like someone already said it’s sad when the hardest part of Mythic raiding is actually getting 20 capable raiders and not the content itself. If I made a post on the forums on my Warlock looking for a guild I’d have 50 replies in the matter of a few hours.

[david0925]

Outside of Avatar and KJ, ToS is already a joke. All the other bosses are a cake walk. Like someone already said it’s sad when the hardest part of Mythic raiding is actually getting 20 capable raiders and not the content itself. If I made a post on the forums on my Warlock looking for a guild I’d have 50 replies in the matter of a few hours.

It's a joke now because it is about to become outdated content. Many guilds hit 5/9m wall before Crucible and second iteration of Mistress nerf come along. I agree that the hardest part is to find 20 (well, closer to 25) people that can perform well and mesh reasonably well together (a lot of guild breakup or drama happen from guilds fragment into factions that may be hostile toward each other). However, I don't agree with "their balance is bad already so adding another element is not a big deal" mentality. Class stacking is already a thing, and when you give players the ability to game player number to ease mechanics, you're adding a variable that's even more annoying to control because "everyone can do it".

I think Mythic is fine as it is, especially when most of the fights just have bigger numbers, 1-2 new mechanics at the most, and marginally better reward. Unless they are actually going to revamp Mythic into very innovative fights, there's no reason to push more people into it anyway.

[Trend]

hence why participation is so much lower than it was for the 10/25 Mythic format.

According to who? Honestly, do you have some data you're using to state this "fact"? Given that Blizzard does not release subscription numbers anymore, it would seem to me to be impossible to say what the raid participation rates are. Sure you can get an idea of how many people raid mythic from wowprogess and the like, since it's pretty unlikely the same person would be raiding mythic in more than one raid group. But since you don't know how many people are even playing wow, you cannot possibly say what the percentage is, even if you're just looking at mythic. And then you have to compare that fuzzy number to another percentage from long ago that you also can't figure out in order to determine if the participation rate has gone up or down.

You may be right or you may be wrong and it does not matter anyway. But this thing with how people spitball their opinions as if they're obvious facts is just annoying.

[Osmeric]

According to who? Honestly, do you have some data you're using to state this "fact"?

One could draw a conclusion based on the wowprogress figures, with some assumptions.

[caervek]

According to who? Honestly, do you have some data you're using to state this "fact"?

There was a big thread on it a year or so ago where somebody collated all the armory progression data, basically the amount of people participating in mythic raiding (as in doing the raid not just plugging the first boss) fell by 2/3 between SoO and HFC. To put that in perspective, the amount of mythic players fell over the course of the expansion by roughly double the rate that the amount of subs fell over the course of the expansion.

[risingforce]

10man being available again would fix this issue, but I don't think Blizz will add it back in. And mythic being flex makes for the same issues 10man had, and tbf the balancing would be even worse.

I disagree, but wholeheartedly support your other notion:

I think the only reasonable solution, is to combine more realms together, get more mixed realms. Big servers don't have this issue as much, so combo the small servers, whether you're adding 4-5 together or what.

Bigger realms increases the chances of recruitment, finding subs etc; it's just a better environment for everyone, not just raiding -PVP, Auction House, etc. I think Blizzard's policy of Realm fragmentation and exorbitant Game Service [prices] should be a legacy of the past, and hampers all of the above.

Cheers

[Realitytrembles]

The reason we're seeing such struggles in Mythic isn't because it's too hard or inaccessible.

It's because people don't want to put in the time to be a hardcore/semi-hardcore raider anymore

I would say it's both. Mythic is far too difficult for most people's tolerance for failure. Hours of wipes to learn a boss? The answer from many is no. Inaccessibility comes in too, when guilds set insane requirements for recruits (iLvl necessitating a laborious gear grind, 90% or more attendance, intolerance for natural human failings that lead to mistakes, etc). I've always smiled when such guilds then complain of the difficulty of recruiting.

The time factor is also relevant. Not just in the amount of time ( 3 nights a week for 4 hours a night, just to give an example I've seen), but in regularly scheduling the play time. I'll stick my neck out here and assert that a great many players simply aren't willing to do that.

[Deleted]

I would say it's both. Mythic is far too difficult for most people's tolerance for failure. Hours of wipes to learn a boss? The answer from many is no.

It's not a matter of "tolerance for failure" but rather an issue of tolerance toward unfun and terrible designs (who can look me in the eye honestly and tell me that spending an evening attempting Kill Jaeden is fun ?) when so many good games compete for the free time of the players.

A raid should be a social activity where players would find a way to tackle the challenges by problem solving, talking and coordinating (and raids used to be just that in wow). Instead mythic raiding are mostly DPS checks coordinated rope jumping challenges nowadays.

[Biomega]

It's not a matter of "tolerance for failure" but rather an issue of tolerance toward unfun and terrible designs (who can look me in the eye honestly and tell me that spending an evening attempting Kill Jaeden is fun ?)

To be fair, ToS is a bit of an outlier. The problems with that tier were not systemic issues with Mythic difficulty, but a design screwup and failure to communicate between design teams leading to the whole Tomb of Soakgeras debacle. People were pissed off and frustrated because the design choices narrowed raid composition and created severe balance problems for some classes (like Rogues or Ret Paladins) - but that's because of how Tomb was designed, not because of how Mythic raiding works. Other tiers with very difficult fights did not have such problems, or at least not to such a degree.

[shaunika123]

Outside of Avatar and KJ, ToS is already a joke. All the other bosses are a cake walk. Like someone already said it’s sad when the hardest part of Mythic raiding is actually getting 20 capable raiders and not the content itself. If I made a post on the forums on my Warlock looking for a guild I’d have 50 replies in the matter of a few hours.

could it be because the raid is like 5 months old? of course it's a fucking joke now. even avatar is a joke compared to what he was.

so yeah, the hardest part of mythic raiding IS getting 20 people together, if you intend to start mythic raiding less than a month before the next raid.

- - - Updated - - -

A raid should be a social activity where players would find a way to tackle the challenges by problem solving, talking and coordinating (and raids used to be just that in wow). Instead mythic raiding are mostly DPS checks coordinated rope jumping challenges nowadays.

that's still what it is, having dps checks dont exclude having to coordinate, communicate, and solve problems. you're making it look like bosses now are just tight enraged target dummies, when in fact they're further from it than "what wow used to be" ever was.

having to do good dps just adds another layer of difficulty to the boss, that's all. anyone can dodge/avoid/handle mechanics if they dont need to worry about dps

[Termintor]

mythic raiding is a pain where i sit. I hate doing it

[Manico]

Bring 10 man mythic raiding back. Let us choose what difficult and what size we want to play (10/20).