Raid Design Philosophy - what should the priority be?

[Dizzarai]

So, I was talking to my buddy recently in game and we got on to a topic of conversation about what gives tiers longevity. That is, when a raid tier lasts for several months (obviously some are just too long like ICC) some seem to burn people out much more quickly than others. Given that raid content, it seems to me, should be designed to best survive the development time before the next content patch for as much of the population as possible, what is it do you think that Blizzard should prioritize in their development of raid content? First let's look at the various components of a raid tier/instance

SETTING:
Clearly one aspect of the raid is the space in which you raid. Obviously there's a lot of variety here. One extreme being Firelands with a great deal of ourdoor space and the areas in which you fight bosses are somewhat contrived arenas. The opposite end of the spectrum is of course something like ToC. Somewhere in the middle you have things like Ulduar, with some scale and size (the start, up to and through XT), but also a well designed and expansive dungeon. While I think a certain amount of size and scale is fun, I'm not sure it adds a lot to the longevity of a raid. Seeing cool settings is a lot of fun...for a week? Or two? I don't know about all of you, but working through the same environment for 6 months, well I stop even really seeing it. Another part of setting I'd argue is trash. Again, as you run an instance over and over and each week clear your farm content to get to your progression point the trash and farm content becomes an annoyance that you want to get through. I found this as a detractor from Firelands. Even with only 7 bosses, the size and amount of trash made getting to your point of progression an annoyingly slow process.

LORE:
Let me say upfront that I don't follow or even really care about the lore. I don't find wow to be all that lore driven. That being said, even I enjoy a certain amount of story. There's something a little fun to give an encounter some context...but do I wanna listen to Saurfang give a 1:30 speech every week? LORD NO! Does anyone still watch the various cut scenes scattered through dragon soul anymore? At this point it seems that anyone who stops to watch the cut scenes is just a jerk who could possibly wipe you because everyone else is sitting on deathwing's back dpsing tentacles or tanking bloods. So, again, while I think there's a certain amount of fun to Lore I don't think it does very much to give a raid longer life for most people.

BOSSES:
When it comes to bosses I think there are a couple of things to consider. One is the number of boss encounters and how much is this expanded by heroic mode. IE does heroic mode, again for the purpose of understanding what gives a raid longevity, equate to a full double the number of bosses? My opinion is no. A heroic mode does not offer the same extension of the life of a raid as does a completely additional raid encounter. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's less. I think that if one were to examine the time at which people become bored with a raid you'd find that there is some amount of time (2-3 weeks or so would be my guess) that each encounter gives you. If one assumes that my time frame is about right I don't think that means that the could've reduced a 22 boss raid for ICC and everyone would've been fine. There's obviously diminishing returns on adding bosses over a certain point. If you look at Ulduar, which I think is the best raid instance I've raided, I already think one or two of the encounters were superfluous and pretty quickly stopped adding much to the raiding experience. Those being Kologarn and Auriaya. I'm not saying they were bad, but somewhat unnecessary. Without them it's still a 12 boss raid (including algalon) and I think still would've felt perfectly epic. That being said, I think a 10 boss raid with heroic modes would've been more successful than a 20 boss raid, again speaking in terms of longevity. Why? Because one of the great motivations in raiding is a sense of accomplishment. spending endless months of progressively harder bosses to even SEE an end of raid boss would be impossibly tedious, not to mention really hard to do without dedicating a lot of time to raiding (imagine how many hours you'd need to raid per week to farm 16 bosses to work on #17?). Furthermore it's very much against blizzard's philosophy of letting people see content. Conversely, putting in a hardmode gives those raiders who enjoy pushing themselves something to do without making people who are happy just raiding normal modes feel like they never get anywhere. What's my conclusion here? Blizzards earlier stated opinion that and ideal raid has "6-8" bosses doesn't make sense. Because it's not about a number of bosses it's about long the development cycle is for the next content patch and how well that number of encounters occupies players for that time. That being said, given a time of around 5 months (firelands) I think this range is a bit low and 9-10 would be better.

The other side of bosses is encounter design. Personally I enjoy bosses that are heavy movement and feel like controlled chaos. Things that are much more execution based then about just putting out numbers. Things that come to mind are Yogg and Professor Putricide. Some bosses only offer this feel on heroic (Hagara, Firefighter). That being said I understand that not everyone necessarily agrees with the style of encounter they enjoy most and in the end variety is best. The point is, when designing a raid, while you obviously need variety, stand still fights are more boring. Furthermore, as you gear up through progression, stand still fights as part of your farm content are even more boring than the rest because the numbers challenge quickly vanishes. Execution based encounters on the other hand continue to offer a challenge and require more engagement from players.

In the end, isn't that what determines the life span of the raid? What keeps you engaged with an instance. I think I've made it clear that in my opinion it's bosses. Not only the number, but also the style of encounter is important. Looking at T12 and 13, doesn't it seem like blizzard of late has prioritized other aspects of raid? What was the most striking part of firelands? The scenery. Even before T12 dropped blue posts were always talking about how cool it looked. T13? Setting and lore. You have cut scenes. You have this unique encounter setting of DW's back... but does this give the raid longevity? Is parachuting onto DW's back to blow off panels keeping you excited til MoP? It doesn't do a lot for me...once I start the spine encounter I don't even really see anything else but a flat space to kill tentacles and adds. In fact, if you think about it, it's a boss encounter...without a boss. I actually think Spine is a pretty weak encounter.

I know this was super long, but for those of you who made it to the end, what do you think is the thing most worth focusing on? What would keep you most engaged into MoP?

[Naedrim]

Let me just begin by saying that I expected a much less... thought out post than this when I clicked this thread. I'm happy to say I was wrong.

As I'm sure you know, everything needs some semblance of balance. They could make a raid where every boss is well designed, but do it challenge mode style with no story or setting, and it would not be all it could be. That said, in my opinion the boss fights themselves being dynamic, (and as you said yourself, high movement) is what really matters. I really enjoy nice scenery and I really love a good story, but if by week 4 my gear is good enough that the "push" of the fight is trivialized (I'm looking at you, Ultraxion), then the boss starts feeling stale. A good example of a fight this tier where I feel they made the fight itself interesting, and not just the numbers, is the gunship. Even though the adds die easily now, it's still engaging to dodge charges and shockwaves.

One thing I think Blizzard made the mistake of doing this tier was relying too much on gimmicks, or at least on mechanics that instead of being challenging and interesting, are instead just unusual. By this I'm mostly talking about spine and madness, with many mechanics on both fights being somewhat "interesting" but not so much fun. (flipping deathwing, spellweave, carrying winds, etc.)

[Artravus]

I think that the main focus of raid design should be on making challenging encounters with mechanics difficult to master so that when you finally kill that boss, you feel so good about it. I've never thought nerfs were the correct move because if you finally kill that boss but it has already been nerfed, that sense of accomplishment isn't as good because you know that you weren't good enough to beat it in its original state. Many times I have found that Blizzard didn't give our guild enough pre-nerf time.

Great thread, and I commend you on all the thought you put into this post! May this thread be graced with constructive responses!

[Whoopsa]

I think, for the majority of players, the ratio of the average clear time for an encounter, multiplied by the number of bosses, to the length that tier is "current." Basically, all setting and lore and intriguing (read: difficult) boss mechanics aside, how long will the typical scheduled raiding guild spend on each encounter, and how far short of the next patch date does that leave them?

Firelands had huge issues because, unless it took your guild a month to down Shannox, a month to down Beth'tliac etc, you were either cockblocked at Heroic Rag for multiple months, or killed it and sat around for multiple months. Dragon Soul is going to have the same issues. No one takes an entire month to kill Morchok, Ultraxion, or Yor'sahj unless some serious shenanigans happened to their raid. Specific bosses aside, if you're 4/8 Heroic in Dragon Soul right now, you're on track to be done by June or July, with the earliest possible release of MoP being September (6 months from start of F&F Alpha, if it started today), and that's assuming it takes you one month for Ultraxion, one month for Warmaster, one for Spine, and one for Madness. The point is that if Ulduar lasted for an entire year, people would have absolutely hated it. Instead, it was a 14 boss instance that was current for 5 months that most players never got to finish.

I think the culprit here is twofold. Firstly, it's Blizzard having a slower development cycle this expansion due to the attempted acceleration of MoP by getting started on art and environment assets earlier than for other expansions. Secondly, Blizzard isn't designing their game for the "hardcore raider" that plays with the same group of people for as little as 5 hours a week on a set chedule, but is instead aiming the game at the person that logs on for an hour each day to do their dailies/LFR/LFD, and making the normal/heroic cycle aimed at the progression of PuGs or loose groups that raid when they happen to have people on (i.e. people that do not have the care or the time to progress at a normal rate). From a business standpoint, this makes perfect sense as that group is about 5 time as large as the scheduled raider population, who are more likely to stay subscribed even after everything is downed so that they can farm the content.

[Nobleshield]

IMO the biggest issue is encounter design. Some of the more annoying bosses this expansion were little more than "Hope you get lucky or it's a night of wipes for you TROLLOLOLOLOL" aka the RNG fights. Things like Al'akir, Rhyolith, heroic Yor'sajh are NOT fun at all. Neither are Patchwerk-style fights like Ultraxion and, to a lesser extent, Baleroc (at least Bale had some movement with the countdown thing on heroic and moving away from the shards). IMO the Patchwerk fight needs to be the first or second boss in the instance, to serve the proper purpose (i.e. the "Can your raid do enough DPS for this instance?" question) and not as a cockblock fight later on to create a wall.

I would say the priority needs to be fights that rely on the players, without having unfun mechanics - specifically thinking of fights like Omnotron, Alysrazor and now Hagara (heroic specifically, but normal isn't fun either). I might be the minority but I'd rather have every single fight be a Patchwerk fight than have to deal with boring, pass/fail trolling mechanics.

[Deleted]

My perfect instance will go something like this:

DO
- At least one HPS/DPS check of a boss in their customary position in the second half of the instance
- A few fights that test individual skill and awareness, this is usually the "RNG fights" that people dislike so much but I think they are necessary, its actually very very rare for RNG to make a kill impossible
- The majority of fights however will be more strategic, with some RNG but not too much and different potential strategies for success
- A truly epic end-boss that wraps up the entire instance well (hint: not tentacles)
- Around 10 bosses total with at least 1 heroic only boss or phase
- Boss length of 6-8 for normal and 10-12 for end boss.
- Trash length of 3-5 min before half of the bosses and no trash before the other half
- An epic overall instance feel that can be accomplished in a combination of ways such as good lore, setting and NPC interactions
- Minimize class imbalance in encounter design

DON'T
- Take your lore, setting or NPC interactions too far to the point where they slow us down every single week with no option to turn them off
- Put in vehicle gimmicks, I spent countless hours leveling and learning how to play this character not that dragon that you quickly designed just for this one fight. Plus they are always buggy as hell
- Speaking of bugs...

What I care about most is the encounters. The rest of the instance (such as the zone design and lore) should have some effort put into it but I can live with it being done pretty poorly so long as the boss fights are great.

[Dizzarai]

I appreciate everyone's thoughtful responses. I was trying to start a constructive conversation about this. It seems to me that in Firelands and DS, full raiding tiers, the focus hasn't been on providing bosses content that effectively occupy us before the next content. Obviously there are plenty of guilds that haven't killed heroic madness yet and didn't kill heroic rag when he was current. Putting in an exceptionally difficultly tuned encounter at the end of raid doesn't give the raid effective life in my opinion. Blizz being able to look back and say "see 97% of the raiding community didn't kill rag or spine" does not mean that the tier did a great job of keep people entertained prior to the next content patch. Looking at T12 and 13, how do you think Blizzard views this decision? Does it seem like Blizz is much more focused on an exciting launch of a tier then effectively keeping the majority of us occupied beyond the race to world first.

This is a bit off topic, but does anyone else think that even though the design scheme so often seems to be catering to the casual that the focus of raiding is just about that race to world first because once that's done news stops being about the current tier. At that point the focus moves to development of the next thing in terms of news. Does it ever seem like making that first month or so entertaining and exciting to watch is what the real focus is because that's where the "news" comes from? I'm not trying to turn this into a blizzard bashing thread. I just wonder if that's why we're seeing 2 consecutive tiers with a lot of focus on setting/lore and then epic looking final fights (rag's leg's fighting on DW's back etcetc).