The most prefered PvE progression model

[Lilija]

Can we choose a customised one? :P

That's why I left it multiple choise ^^ I know it's not perfect but 15 poll options isn't enough for all possibilities people might think of

[Sealbinder]

I think having a high difficulty raid tier for those who want it (no nerfs, really have to know the fights well) is great, but also have LFR for those who don't have the time/ability to do the top tier runs.

I think that gives the best of both worlds. It allows everyone to see the content, without removing the challenge for those who really want it. While I don't necessarily understand the hardcore player mentality, they play the game as well and should have the challenge they want. They just should not have it at the expense of removing the content from the majority of other players who just want to see it and have fun. I think having 3 tiers is the right way to do it (LFR for the casual majority, regular for the more relaxed guilds (or those interested in gearing up for heroic) and heroic for those who really want a challenge. Add a LFR acheivement for completing the raid solely in LFR so the special people don't complain (if you complete regular you get the LFR and regular achievement, etc). This way those who want to be special are happy, those who want to play casually are happy. It is a good compromise.

THESE TIERS SHOULD NOT BE NERFED. Those who are doing heroic should continue to have the challenge and it should be remain hard to complete heroic. This way it always remains an accomplishment and is for the elites only. Those who are doing regular raids only, should continue to have their challenge level. If they can't complete it, they need to change their planning or gear up a bit more. This should be the normal tier where the majority of raiding guilds spend their time. Then LFR should remain as it is, for those like me who just want to have fun and see the content. I am not in it for the accomplishment in regular or heroic. I just want to have fun on my schedule without having to go by a what the guild "raid schedule" is and enjoy myself in a group environment.

This would give everyone the type of raiding they want. Keep the challenge where it is needed. Honestly I am a fan of the idea of having buffs for raids. I know this would offer a massive programming challenge, which is why it is hypothetical. I think people would like this option, but as I said, this would be hard as hell to program in. What they could have is buffs for raids (buffs to mobs/bosses). This way as they add new content you can buff the old content as well to give you more raid variety. One people get to DS they seldom do Firelands, BoT, etc. But if you could have the option to buff all of those bosses to meet current raid tier difficulty (LFR, regular, heroic as above) it would all remain viable and rewarding content. Obviously the gear would need to be updated for the buffs, but it would give everything a lot of replay value. This would also make it so people don't get burned out on "current" content. People would not have as many complaints about DS if they could throw all the other raids into the mix in order to gear up. Variety would prevent people from being bored and would keep everything fresher.

[Fumu]

Combine Cata's LFR and LK's separate 10/25 lockouts and needing to progress through old tiers to get to the latest, and I couldn't possibly ask for more.

[clevin]

A mix TBC and others. TBC's issues were that you HAD to raid 25 man since for most of the xpac there was only Kara for others plus the attunements to enter T6 being needed for every single player. 24 people had it? No, sorry, you need to clear all of SSC and TK for that 25th. Silly. The Kara attunements on the other hand were fine. Yeah, you had to run some 5 mans. BFD. If someone whined about the Kara attunement it always turned out that they weren't really into raiding.

Basically, what I want is this:

1) No split between normal and heroic. One difficulty
2) All raids available in both sizes.
3) Attunement on the first tier for every PLAYER. Once you're on the track, the guild needs to get a "we killed the end boss" achievement to move to the next tier but the player does not. This makes people prove they are really interested in raiding by doing the initial attunement but after that it's the guild's choice on when and whether to bring them.
4) I'm not sure about gear. It felt, starting in WOTLK, too easy to gear a toon. My hunter dinged when ICC was current, but was in 4/5 T9 in 3 days and raiding ICC that week. Two weeks in and she was ICC geared. That feels... off. On the other hand, this means that people who want to start raiding later in an xpac or on an alt then aren't irretrievably behind.
5) LFR. Eh. On the one hand, it's not epic enough. Any raid that you can clear with zero coordination in an evening is too easy. On the other hand, this provides a way for people to 'see the content' which has been a long standing request from people who can't raid at regular times, can't consistently show up on raid nights due to life, etc. Leave it. But never let it give the same titles or perks as normal. YOu can see the content this way, but not act like you did it in a real, full on raid.

[Lilija]

It's interesting to see that opinions are so split about the subject. Even if the numbers do not reflect the opinions of the entire playerbase, it's still interesting.

Aye. I kinda expected it to be like that. I hope it helps few people realize that because for them some WoW era was their best game experience it didn't have to be the same for everyone else. All progression models had their pros and cons. Also people should realize they should give some slack to Blizzard as of who they are cattering too. The fact is, no matter to which model they go more, there will a huge amount of people who dislike it.

While experiencing all the models I personally enjoy the direction the game is going now and while I don't agree with everything (like blanket nerfs) I have good hopes for the future.

[fangless]

Ultima Online


/trollface.

[Daedelus]

Current model is the same as WOTLK model minus the LFR.

It isn't. WOTLK had separate 10 & 25 man lockouts with different loot for each.

[Kurzior]

Tier 11 Cataclysm model for the setup of a single tier.
- multiple instances
- same gear for 10/25 man raids
- no sweeping (%) nerfs to heroic content (it's heroic for a reason after all)


After that, use the WotLK method of adding tiers.
- dungeon gear is kept at or below the level of at least the 2 most recent raiding tiers (i.e. don't introduce dungeons like the Hour of Twilight with tier 13, that have equivalent gear to- and make obselete, tier 12)
- generally (excluding ToC) larger raids which are partitioned in some way (i.e. the wings of ICC) so there is a choice in progression paths through the tier. Comparatively, DS had only 2 possible paths that only differed in what order you chose to kill Yor'sahj and Zon'ozz.
- no mass nerf to content. I don't especially care for progressive content nerfs or player buffs (strenght of Wrynn, Power of the Aspects) either, but they are at least tolerably, rather than mass 20% nerfs with no regard for the outcome.


Along with this, there are 2 things I would like to see Blizzard avoid in MoP.

1 - DO NOT, for any reason, make an entire raiding tier obselete by putting better gear in 5-man dungeons. Along the same line, do not make LFR drop better gear (or better tier set pieces) than gear availabe in the previous raid tier. Raiding should be about progression through multiple tiers. Not about snowplowing everyone into the same tier, then sticking them there killing the same bosses (regardless of difficulty) for nearly a year.

2 - DO NOT mass-nerf content just to make the statistics for how many people have killed the boss match what you think they should be. There's a vast amount of effort put into tuning encounters to what they need to be. Don't just throw that away for the sake of making the graphs look nice. If a fight needs to be re-tuned or changed to make it doable or even just to make it less of an RNG boss, do that. If you just blindly swing the nerf bat at an entire raid tier. It looks phenominally lazy and often doesn't address the real issues with an encounter.

For example, the nerf to tier 11 normal modes. Let's look at Halfus. The most frequent cause of a wipe I ever saw was a missed interrupt on Shadow Nova. It did a lot of damage, stalled healer casts, and made it difficult to recover. While nerfing the damage and health of the mobs in the fight made recovery easier, it didn't mechanically change the fight. A missed interrupt likely still caused a wipe. Instead of nerfing the bosses health, why not do something to either remove the knockback or make the cast easier to interrupt (longer cast time or cooldown perhaps).


Rant over. You may now return to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Selxxa]

I liked how TBC actually had real progression, it gave the game longevity and new raid guilds something to look forward to.

My guild has just started raiding, and on our second week we one-shot every boss in DS10. Granted we still have to do heroic modes, but we've pretty much experienced all the content already, just in an easier form. There's nothing new and exciting to be gained from doing heroic modes beyond the prestige and better gear (but better gear for what, if that's the end of the game?).

Also you're drastically exaggerating how difficult the ICC heroics were. They were just as faceroll as anything we have now. The only one that I recall wiping regularly in was Halls of Reflection and that's just because at this point in WoW's history people were even more allergic to CC than they are now, just letting the mobs run wild was hell for healers and tanks.

[Daedelus]

I'd like to see some basic attunement brought back - not the ridiculous ones that were in place at the start of TBC, but something more like the Karazhan one (even that one was a bit extreme, although it was great fun). A quest chain, involving a bit of travelling round the world, to get some items, then have to kill a couple of final bosses in the 5 man heroics, something like that, just to give the raid some context. I'd also like to see some more quest chains that involve actually killing raid bosses. Again, the chain that took you through Karazhan added to the raid, and gave it an extra level of interest i.e. killing a new boss completes the next step in the chain (LFR does not count lol)

[wariofan1]

T11, then mix it with TBC so you won't skip any raids in future patches. Whoever thought that it would be good to skip any raids in an expansion (like going right from heroics to ICC/DS) should get ooked in the dook and get fired. The current model is definately the worst, there is so much less content than ever before, just like by the end of Wrath. I just don't get how Blizzard could think that it's a good idea to skip any content that could stay current in an expansion, especially when you only make 8 bosses in a raid.

[Yalingo]

I voted tier 11. Best time I've had in this game. t12 ruined it.

For people who loved the BC path, try rift. That's exactly how it is in that game.

[Daedelus]

Once you're on the track, the guild needs to get a "we killed the end boss" achievement to move to the next tier but the player does not.

This is a good idea. There are already guild achievements for killing heroic bosses. It would surely not be hard to add 'progress' ones, without which the guild would not be able to raid the next tier. I think there'd be too much whining from guilds who can't do this though. Maybe only have the restriction for a few weeks, then remove it, like in TBC. I just think Blizzard don't want to add this sort of thing ever again, sadly.

[Duridi]

I found the T11 model to be quite enjoyable, so voting current Cataclysm model without the nerfs. I also think LFR is a great addition, even though it's not at all for me. Interesting to see that a lot of others can also specify T11 as a very good tier.

The TBC model is also spot on in my case, but because it's only appealing to players like me, while the Cataclysm model without the nerfs(and including LFR) is appealing to both me and many others Cataclysm got the vote.

[NineSpine]

I would prefer a model like Ulduar, but with fewer bosses per instance. I think hard mode is a clunky, boring mechanic. Building it into the fights may take more time to implement and balance, but I think it's worth the fluidity. To be clear: I don't play hard modes. However, I like feeling like there is something beyond my grasp in the game. Hard mode just doesn't feel like that. To me, it makes the game feel small.

---------- Post added 2012-05-07 at 05:10 PM ----------

This is a good idea. There are already guild achievements for killing heroic bosses. It would surely not be hard to add 'progress' ones, without which the guild would not be able to raid the next tier. I think there'd be too much whining from guilds who can't do this though. Maybe only have the restriction for a few weeks, then remove it, like in TBC. I just think Blizzard don't want to add this sort of thing ever again, sadly.

I think the real problem is that it really, really discourages new guilds from forming.

[volescue]

I said TBC; however, I would love to see some sort of hybrid with the current cata model and TBC.

LFR for people who can't spend hours a day, 2-3 times a week raiding. Account wide attunements for access to the 10m and 25m raids. Hard modes for the top tier guilds. % nerfs after a while; however, there would be some incentive to actually do the fight without the buff. Currently, there is no reason not to do it without the buff, and because of that most people don't see a point in trying to do the fight without it. Perhaps they could add some sort of title for doing all the bosses without the buff or give an extra geode or something like that.

[Varyk]

Wotlk was easily my favorite. I really wish there was some "middle ground" between TBC and Wotlk. I liked how the 5-mans weren't extremely difficult right after hitting 85. I also liked the last boss dropping "better" loot. I was so excited after hitting 80 being able to get the few Faction epics as well as do a few 5 mans and not be in all blues at the end of the day. I actually felt like I had progressed even after hitting 80, unlike in Cata where I was wearing dungeon blues and replacing them with dungeon blues. It's stupid how the color makes a difference honestly. That should probably also change.

The badge system is ok. I like there being 1 or 2 types of currency with raids dropping more. I miss the weekly raid quest, it was somewhat of a reason to go back to the older raids, which I liked. I personally only did LFR like 3 or 4 times the first couple weeks to get my 4 piece, so I can't give a lot of feedback on it. The fact that people actually feel like that's the endgame kind of upsets me, since it's nothing like heroic (which is actual endgame) although I sort of get the whole boss=boss logic, even if it's not true.

[ati87]

It isn't. WOTLK had separate 10 & 25 man lockouts with different loot for each.

topic is about progression and not about loot.

[Bapu]

I cant really understand the mix between T11 and TBC. As in normal/heroic modes+previous tiers still actually meaning something? Or one mode/multiple raids to journey through? Or TBC minus attuments and resistance gear?

I personally enjoyed the attuments so much. Kara attument, what a cool and epic memory. <3 And I also feel that the attuments for BT/MH were actually needed, since that was one of the ways to stop content getting outdated. I never managed to kill Vashj or Kael. And when they removed attuments for BT/MH, I quit. Somehow I dont find outgearing content fun.

But back to the topic. TBC. For the love of God, TBC!

[propayne]

I will go with tier 11 as well. Made the game at least a little challenging for awhile. I will say that as you go through the tiers I am a fan of making 5 mans quicker. In the beginning you are actually using that gear out of those 5 man heroics to get set for first tier of raiding so I feel spending some time to obtain those items is worth it. After that though should be able to run them with your eyes closed half asleep