Questions stands. Why can't there be just one raid size?
I would love to see one raid size of 15 man. To those that disagree, what would need to happen to change your mind?
Questions stands. Why can't there be just one raid size?
I would love to see one raid size of 15 man. To those that disagree, what would need to happen to change your mind?
Asking 10 Mans to recruit 5 more people, and 25 Mans to drop 10 people is a big ask, something a lot would be very angry about. I think it would be better in the long run, but the short term would be very, very hard on Blizzard.
As a recent blue said, it would mean 25mans have to lose 10 people and 10mans have to find 5 others.
It's one of those changes they would love to do, but would require a time machine. People are too invested in the current model.
A lot of players expect two raid sizes these days - its fairly standard in a lot of MMOs.
The game also legacy issues to contend with.
Players still moan about the loss of 15, 20 and 40 man raiding so getting rid of 10s and/or 25 won't solve that issue
At least some guild would have to resize. The impact would be less if you chose 10 man as the default though, but you'd also lose some of the benefits of size.
A single raid size would solve a lot of issues. There'd be no need for shared locks and if you implemented a VP style system where loot was bought instead of bought as well you'd get around a lot of the gearing issues as well, where RNG and ninjaing has much less of an impact.I would love to see one raid size of 15 man. To those that disagree, what would need to happen to change your mind?
Somewhere between 12 and 18 players would likely be ideal, but you'd probably still need a 25 man LFR. I think that size works well for that content.
EJL
How many 25 man guilds completely disappeared when people found out they could get the same loot for running 10 man? Let's check WoW Progress from WotLK to Cata.
Tier 10 - 59356 25 man guilds completed the first boss of normal mode ICC by the end of WotLK
Tier 11 - 5151 25 man guilds completed Maloriak on 25 man BWD (highest number of kills of any normal mode 25 man boss in tier 11) by the end of Cata
Results - 54205 25 man guilds disappeared from the face of the planet (approximately 91.3%)
It would appear that most 25 man guilds couldn't care less about 25 man raiding. If we look at current MOP stats, about 92% of all guilds that have started raiding normal mode are 10 man. So 8% of current raiding guilds are 25 man. Of those, I'm betting many of them would prefer to raid with at least 5 less people who are derping up the encounters and preventing them from progressing. This would leave them with 20 people, 15 per encounter with 5 alternates...who could go to a current 10 man guild so they aren't being benched. Problem solved.
It will happen but they will warn people well in advance. I can actually see it happening in the next expac. They will warn people after the last tier has been out a couple of months, giving people atleast a few months to sort out guilds. Thats what i reckon anyway, just speculation.
Actually, it looks like people are less and less invested in raiding at all, beyond LFR. If you add up the guilds tracked by wowprogress.com that have downed any normal mode bosses, and count them as 25 raiders if they've downed the first boss on 25 man mode, 10 raiders otherwise, you get less than 200,000 players. Even if you pad that with extras, it's not that many people bothering to even start normal mode raiding.
Myself, I'm not even going to bother to try to get any character into a raiding guild, even though I did so in the past. It's just not worth the bother. I suspect a great many people who might have raided are just going to do LFR and nothing beyond.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
An analysis of DS 25 man (which was around for nearly a year...about the same time as ICC) actually shows that less than 5000 25 man guilds completed the first boss in DS. I was looking at tier 10 vs. tier 11 which shows just how fast 25 man tumbled down the drain. You are right though. A more accurate picture would be by the total number of players that have the 25 man achievement, but the fact that over 50000 guilds disappeared from the 25 man scene is pretty convincing that people did not want to do 25 man raiding and only did so because the loot was better.
So dropping to 15 man only would still most likely keep the majority of the current raiding scene. It shouldn't be incredibly hard for a 10 man to find 5 additional players and most 25 mans are already wishing they could at least replace if not drop a few players.
I think it is time to cut the cord and make one size, do it at the same time they normalize damage and kill two birds with one stone.
Just get rid of 25 man completely imo.
Its not just the reduced difficulty, its the availability of players, tanks and healers especially. You could perhaps retune the difficulty to require proportionately fewer healers, but you'd probably still need to balance around two tanks.
25 seemed like it worked out OK and seemed ideal given the relative lack of tanks/healers at times but I wouldn't get hung up on numbers.
EJL
Get rid of 10 man too. Make 5-man the current raids, and re-tune all dungeons for solo play.
Then in a few years they can get rid of 5-mans and we can all play the MASSIVELY multiplayer game solo.
The game lost a lot of its magic when they got rid of 40-players. Raids haven't really felt epic in scale, and the hemorrhaging population since they began to remove the emphasis from 25-man raiding and server based communities (a la dungeon finder, LFR, etc) speaks for itself.
Blizzard's reasoning behind their resistance to this change is actually pretty sound: Doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in asking EVERY raider to make changes. 10 mans needing to work in 5 more people and 5 more roles and asking 25 mans to chop out 10 people (then get 5 more if they want a 2nd group for those 10 cast aways).
Just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Nothing wrong with 10 man raiding and 25 mans still have their place. I dont know where this 15 man love affair has come from...
Well something has to be done...
This cant continue for much longer...
We had one raid size, and then another one raid size.