15m Raids...

[Ichy]

And what do Blizzard gain by doing that?

None of us have been trying to prove what Blizzard would gain, we are mierly pointing out to the OP that 15m and 10m raids existed long ago so they have some experience in tuning raid for 15 man. BTW 15man raids where not much different than 25's today, 2 tanks 2-3 heals, rest dps.

[Tziva]

I saw somewhere that Blizzard was thinking of turning 10m raids into 15m raids, but then decided not to do it?

Anybody have any idea why? I think 15m raids would be better than 10m raids.

What do you all think/feel?

I did not see anything stating this.

The closest I saw is a blue post saying that if they were designing the game initially knowing what they know now, that they might have tried 15 man raids. But because it would require too much of an overhaul to the raiding system, they have no plans to tweak the raid sizes now after having already settled on the 10/25 size years ago.

I think 15 mans would be an ideal size, but it would be a headache to change it now. The adjustment from Classic to BC was enough of a headache for guilds; there's no need to do it again just to experiment to see if people like 15 better.

[Dyart]

The situation is a bit strange.

In the WLK times, they are trying new things in raid every time, in Naxxramas they introduced the raid achievement rewards and early hard modes, in Uldar they perfect the hard mode, in TOC they further separated the normal and heroic difficulty into 2 CD, in ICC it was again shared. While some changes are good some are not that good, the point is that in the time of WLK there were not that many ppl whining so bad, yet Blizzard is still making changes every tier.

In the Cata times, however, the subs number drops, and so many ppl whine about 10/25 shared raid lock out. But guess what? The only thing they did is the introduce of LFR!

[Deleted]

And what do Blizzard gain by doing that?

It's much easier to balance loot drops. I can't remember the exact figure for how much drops from 25mans, but switching to 20mans would be a solid 2x drop rate and would also make guild mergers / join runs easier for the same reason. Likewise, 40 is just 2x 20, so adding those back would be that little bit easier.

OT: I believe blizzard said if they were making wow from scratch, 15man raids would seem like a nicer number than 10 - easier to get full class representation, but they wouldn't change anything in the foreseeable future. The only time they've changed raid sizes in the past, then 40mans were removed, caused a lot of problems with people having to get rid of raiders, they'd rather not repeat that.

[Deleted]

Bring in the headache I say. Half of the guilds will persevere and out of the ashes new guilds will rise. When the dust settles, the game will be better

[Deleted]

I think 15 mans would be an ideal size, but it would be a headache to change it now. The adjustment from Classic to BC was enough of a headache for guilds; there's no need to do it again just to experiment to see if people like 15 better.

Despite all the headache, number of subs increased in BC, so probably people liked the new system more.. In any case, as long as a notice will be given well in advance, I don't see a problem for most of guilds to adapt. New expansion is always a major shake down with all the people stopping playing, starting playing, retuning to the game etc, so any 10man will be able to grow to 15 easily. If you're in 25man guild and wondering how you're going to size down to 15man if needed - just wait until Diablo release.

[Ryve]

15m raids would be too short, hell most spells have a 30 yard range.


OT: Balancing. They finally got a base set of numbers to compare 10 man to 25 man and to suddenly add 5 more people would play hell with that
(do you simply add 5 dps, or 1 tank and 4 dps? 1 tank, 1 heals, 3 dps?)

Why would they have to go with any particular format? At the moment, having 25 and 10 man fights means they can't have the dynamics overly different. Make a 3 tank fight, that can theoretically also be 2 tanked if DPS chain taunt and personal CD one of the adds. Then make a 1 tank fight where either both of the tanks or a tank and a DPS have to switch to heals while the other tank uses their DPS spec.

Some people would cry about it because ZOMG I hate healing - kick them (preferably in the teeth), and others would love actually having an opportunity to use those otherwise well geared hypothetical off specs they never needed to use.

Despite all the headache, number of subs increased in BC, so probably people liked the new system more.. In any case, as long as a notice will be given well in advance, I don't see a problem for most of guilds to adapt. New expansion is always a major shake down with all the people stopping playing, starting playing, retuning to the game etc, so any 10man will be able to grow to 15 easily. If you're in 25man guild and wondering how you're going to size down to 15man if needed - just wait until Diablo release.

I'm not sure why people in any way associate raid formats with WoW subs... It seems the majority of players don't raid at all... They might PvP or AFK in SW/Org, hang out in the Goldshire Inn on Moonguard, farm gold relentlessly.

[Nestoras]

10/20 Seperate content, better than current 10vs25 (not 10/25 i am afraid)
10/20 Shared content, better than current 10vs25
12/24 seperate content, better than current 10vs25
12/24 shared content better than current 10vs25
15 man single size better than current 10vs25
18 man single size better than current 10vs25.

Arguments over why those models are better than what we have now, can be found in this very site for those that care to read.

Yet, what are we going to have for MoP?

More of the same 10vs25!!!

Enjoy

[Popabear]

I would vote 15man in a heartbeat. This coming from somebody who has run both group types through all tiers this expansion.

I have problems right now with both 10 and 25man.

10man:
- The intimate nature is nice, but feels a hair to small for me
- The size doesn't lend itself to melee. More than 2 melee in your comp just invites headache
- Not a lot of room for creativity in comp. My roster has to be kept semi small (around 12) in order to rotate people accordingly
- I'd like an extra BR for progression content, but that's just me
- The amount of wasted loot / RNG is staggering with two drops per boss.
- Since buffs are raid specific, it's very hard to judge your performance vs others on world of logs
- A guild with a single 10man doesn't usually have enough people on to do things like alt runs, or RBGs internally

25man also has it's issues:
- Recruiting and maintaining a roster of talented individuals during a time of dwindling player base. Problem is magnified if you aren't the top guild in your faction.
- Frustration mounts faster when one or two individuals are messing up, because more people are affected
- Harder to diagnose where the fight fell apart between attempts
- Wipes tend to take longer (BUT you do get more benefit as a guild from feasts and cauldrons)

I think 15man solves alot of my concerns, and also has some side benifits.
- Less sizes to balance (currently 25LFR,25norm,25heroic,10norm,10heroic) "should" mean more new content. (15normal, 15heroic, 15 LFR per tier)
- A single size raid means we can use room geometry more (right now many rooms feel HUGE on 10man, and some rooms feel "tight" on 25man)
- Gives some more flexibility than 10mans (fights can be 2-4 healers, 1-2 tanks, maybe as many as 4-5 melee?)
- An extra piece of loot + more possible specs in raid should help the RNG
- More specs means greater chance of all raid buffs covered
- 5 extra slots gives more room for subs which allows for bigger "bench"
- This + keeping RBG's at 10man, would increase the likelihood that a guild with a single raid team could also support an RBG team.

[banketangtian]

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[tohyatvc]

Single sized 15 man sounds like a good idea to be honest. 25 mans downsizing? Happened with TBC anyway from 40 man..

[Deleted]

I agree 15 man raids would be awesome, in 10 man its just too small and you have to be very picky about classes you take in order to get all the buffs and getting a balance on teir tokens can be a nightmare. 25 man is nice but getting that many people together can be difficult and u tend to get a larger skill difference from the best to the worst players.

[Mirishka]

10 and 25 work fine, both do their job. 10s have the convenience of less people, but the downside of less loot and stricter group composition (to cover buffs) and 25s have the increased stress of a larger team, but far more flexibility and more than twice the drops on average.

[Shoridayo]

Ehhhh. I like the way things are now, but I wish 10 and 25 had separate lockouts. I liked it better then.

Hell, I'd be okay if they added 40 man raiding to give us all 3 options.

[Linkedblade]

I personally think to jump all of the raid size issues, Blizzard should just implement scaled raids. If you only have say 15 people than just scale the raid for 15 people and drop an appropriate and porportional amount of gear. Also, have the mechanics scale to the number of dps and heals. The amount of tanks has to remain constant or else the trinity is entirely useless.

[Vanisari]

Blizzard said (During the MoP press release when the NDA lifted) That if they could start all over, they would do the 15 man raid size, however the 10-25 sizes are too far rooted to change now, and that they will think on it for feature games *coughtitancough*

Yeah, they said that they would do it as 15 man if they were starting fresh. I personally like the current system. I do my main raid in 25m, and then have alt runs/off night runs as 10m in a more personal raid with guildies.

[Deleted]

I personally think to jump all of the raid size issues, Blizzard should just implement scaled raids. If you only have say 15 people than just scale the raid for 15 people and drop an appropriate and porportional amount of gear. Also, have the mechanics scale to the number of dps and heals. The amount of tanks has to remain constant or else the trinity is entirely useless.

Dynamically scaling raids must be one of the few ideas that can be worse than 10/25 and particularly in Cataclysm.

They can't balance 2 sizes, and people are sugesting multiple, not even preseted sizes (like a 10-20-30 suggestion).
No they asume that it is easy players to join a raid with whatever number and whatever setup (1 tank 19 dps 2 healers anyone?), and the encounter to be adjusted to them!
Further more you re mentioning loot.
As it is now we have (sigh) 2 items in 10 5 in 25, aka 1 per 5 person.
Lets say you have 17 people group.
The boss would drop ehm 3,4 items? Or round it down to 3?

I wont expand more, i will just say this:
10 and 25 being balanced, and equally viable choices, that award excactly the same rewards for the same time and efford invested is nice in theory.

In practice? It never happened and it never will, because theory is an oversimplified version of things that will never happen in reality. When something is different it is just that. DIFFERENT. It doesnt mean harder or easier. It means different.

Same thing goes for dynamic size.
This one is good only in a theory that doesnt take under considaretion a single parameter
You just state it and you smile.

Because if you take under consideration ANY of the issues that need to be adressed, when designing a raid encounter (loot, area, boss abilities, setup issues), then even the most ignorant person in the world can see that this CAN'T WORK!

[brirrspliff]

10 and 25 being balanced, and equally viable choices, that award excactly the same rewards for the same time and efford invested is nice in theory.

In practice? It never happened and it never will, because theory is an oversimplified version of things that will never happen in reality. When something is different it is just that. DIFFERENT. It doesnt mean harder or easier. It means different.

i see it the same way. once we only had 40 man raids, and later only 25 man raids, everything was fine. then they added the "fun raidsize", aka 15 man zg/za, which was great, too. because it was a different thing. different bosses, tuned to the raid size, different loot, etc, etc.

when they tried to make 10 man raiding a "copy" of 25 man raiding, only with 15 less people, they screwed up.

[420rogue]

there shoulda always been one raid size OR have different raid size depending on instance (aka kara, then gruul, then za). They could make wonderful raids out of 10m, 15m, 25m, 30m whatever size you want but only if that raid is meant for one size only. As mentoned above, when you start trying to do the same raid with 15 less people, you lose a lot of potential and flavor in the process. Kael'thas? Vashj? Illidan? We will never have dynamic raids like this again as long as they try to fit two different sizes to the same mechanics per boss. I also remember nerd screams after downing each boss back in BC because you spent a lot of time on each boss. Now people bitch if it isn't dead in 2 weeks, or if it did die that quickly it's lackluster because it was easy. No one cares you killed morchok, even on heroic. But everyone was stoked to kill The Lurker for the first time. Each fight should be harder so that you feel accomplished. I didn't feel accomplished til I killed heroic spine. Nothing before that even mattered. Which I feel is blizzard's fault and is a real shame.

forgot to mention something incredibly wrong from this tier. The fact that a LOT of guilds cleared normal mode DS the first week it went live. That is absolutely rediculous imo. It is also one of the reasons I think there should only be one (harder) difficulty like in BC.

edit: After reading all this lol I must really liked everything about BC because it just seems like all the problems of today with raiding didn't exist then cause they were doing it right!

[shappo]

How about 6man 12man 24man adding 1 DPS to 5mans will make shorter ques and making 10>12 and 25>24 would close the gap of by a small amount making it a little bit easier to balance them. 2 extra DPS in 10man would help with fights like T11 Nef T13 Madness the -1 DPS/healer to 25man wouldn't chance much but the raid/party layout