How to reward 25 man raids for "logistical effort"

[Heathy]

It's too bad the WoW Devs and a vast majority of the playerbase disagree with you, or you could be having fun with everyone else right now.

since when did you become the sole majority?

in other words, how do you, one person, equal a majority. you do realise that player bases change as in lots of ppl leave and lots of new ppl replace them, i know a crap ton of ppl that quit playing seriously around the time i did, sure i enjoyed messing around in cata, but i never got back into raiding properly, too much head ache. having to save your lock outs, bullshit cock blocking nonsense 'omg we can't balance the badges and loot chances' boo fucking hoo, you cut my raiding in half, lfr doesn't cut it im afraid, anything you can do with your eyes closed is not considered fun to me.

its a simple case of the only thing being more fun in 25's is the increase in players, you get more action on the screen, apart from that its the same as 10 man, why put yourself through the hassle of getting 25 ppl together when you can do the same damn thing in 10 man..

bah it was much better when raids were separate sizes entirely, you either had enough or you didn't, the incentive was actually getting the amount of ppl for the raid you wanted to do. i feel even 10 mans should have the option to eventually expand into 25s.

with the lockout you can't even practice any more you get one chance to do it one way and that is it. its counter-intuitive.

[roahn the warlock]

The extra effort is required only to find warm bodies.

The actual execution of fights are much, much harder on 10m. If you can't understand why the people who make this game and most of the playerbase agrees with me, I guess you never will.

I'm sorry, you must not be a heroic raider. It is not more difficult in a 10 man.. let us take garalon for example. you have the same space, the same amout of pheramone drops, but you have 15 more people to fit into that space. You have more idiots who could activate a crush. And yes on progression in heroics, losing one bloke in say heroic gara means a wipe.

[Espe]

So... you have 10 people and two drop.... we have 25 and 7 drop. that is one extra

An extra piece of loot from each boss, three battle rezes per attempt and much, much less executional responsibility per person.

Sounds like plenty of incentive to me, especially for just having to find a few extra warm bodies. That is only if all you care about is loot, which seems to be the common theme among 25m raiders in this thread.

[Dvaldin]

Really, the only reason to do 25 right now (outside of uber-guilds) is to attempt to not disclude guild members. But if you've got, say 13, 22 or 28, it's very limiting.

I think the ideal situation, at least from a leadership standpoint, would to be able to enter a raid instance and have it tune once you enter based on the amount of people in your raid group...balancing automatically if people leave the group of whatever, with a minimum of 10.

I don't know if it's possible to do that though in a manner which would not be exploitable.

[Nebria]

Really, the only reason to do 25 right now (outside of uber-guilds) is to attempt to not disclude guild members. But if you've got, say 13, 22 or 28, it's very limiting.

I think the ideal situation, at least from a leadership standpoint, would to be able to enter a raid instance and have it tune once you enter based on the amount of people in your raid group...balancing automatically if people leave the group of whatever, with a minimum of 10.

I don't know if it's possible to do that though in a manner which would not be exploitable.

a auto scaling would be really nice. we have a 10 man guild and in the past we had say 13 people. so 3 people have to left out. with some kind of up and down scaling this wouldn't be the case.

So... you have 10 people and two drop.... we have 25 and 7 drop. that is one extra, and we have to gear sooo many more people. that and giving one peice of gear to one person in a 25 has a far lower impact than giving one person a piece of gear in 10 mans. Also... we get stupid drops two, we had 4 spirit rings drop from a boss, guess what. We de'd every single one.

as for you de'ing more loot? blood spirits = profession gear for the raid.

what about tokens? ever did a raid where people still need a token but the token that drops isn't even looted? that's bad luck the first time but if it happen 2 or 3 times it isn't fun anymore.

[gyver]

The extra effort is required only to find warm bodies.

The actual execution of fights are much, much harder on 10m. If you can't understand why the people who make this game and most of the playerbase agree with me, I guess you never will.

My guild has a 25man group that runs tuesday, wednesday and thursday. Not content to leave an instance unfinished 10 people usually get together to finish the lockouts on sunday and monday. Not an official guild event, no dkp awarded, free roll on loot. Since the 10man groups are always starting on bosses that the 25man group hasn't killed yet, the 10man group is more progressed than the 25. So what usually happens is the 25man kills a boss for the first time and moves on to start working on a boss that we've either killed on 10man or have been working on already. We start working on the 25man version with all the knowledge of the 10man kill or at least attempts and it is definitely harder.

[Mr Goodkat]

Exactly this. It is already incentivized by being tuned to be much, much easier to execute anyway.

That's what you get for finding a few extra warm bodies to fill out your raid - more loot and an easier time actually getting it.

you are amazing. you know nothing about real raiding or merely desire to provoke.

here are some "push over" 25 man bosses:

baleroc: you needed a enrage strategy to kill him
majordomos: enrage kill
yorsashji: enrage kill (health was later reduced in 25 man due to the big rng influence of the black blob)
ultraxion: enrage kill
spine: massive stacking, health of tendon later reduced in 25 man
garajal: enrage kill

in 10 man raids, you didn't have to worry about the enrage of any of these bosses

but way more important: if 25 man is so much easier (or in your words:"tuned for 15 players and 10 dead bodies"), why are ther only 7% 25 man raids? strange, isn't it? one would think that this size would flourish given the succes of lfr and the level of player skill you experience there.

yeah, i can guess your answer: the all seek the challenge and would never consider taking the path of least resistance.

absolutely convincing...

there is only one problem: 25 man representation is 46% in the top 100, 30% in the best 1000 guilds, but if you check guilds ranked 9001-10000 only 2% are 25 man raids, want to guess how many there are in the bracket 24001-25000?

p.s. your quote (assuming it's real), were they referring to lfr?

[Espe]

you do realise that player bases change as in lots of ppl leave and lots of new ppl replace them

You do realize the WoW Devs have a vested interest (not to mention a financial obligation to their shareholders) in shaping this game for the majority of the people who play it.

And the current way they have shaped it, 25m is only more difficult in the organizational aspect, which occurs outside of raid. Once you actually step foot into the instance, 10hm is currently the hardest content you can tackle in this game.

Yes, that is what the WoW Devs intended, and that is what a vast majority of the playerbase recognizes. They wouldn't design the game this way otherwise.

[Navitas]

Proper raiding and 10 man don't go well together, sorry bro..

Try telling Paragon that. Also; ending any sentence with a condescending 'bro' makes everything said prior to this as: moot.

[Espe]

Try telling Paragon that. Also; ending any sentence with a condescending 'bro' makes everything said prior to this as: moot.

Brilliant reply <3

p.s. your quote (assuming it's real)

It should be clear from what was written that the quote is referring to 10 vs. 25 difficultly in general. They have made several similar comments on 10 vs. 25 executional and organizational difficulties, but I guess the 25m fanbois have... memory issues. Also, google is your friend.

[Tastyfish]

Yeah, just stop. You obviously have no idea how real 25 man raiding works.

Please explain how "real" 25 man raiding is like. I am curious if my Wrath threw MOP experience in 25s is the same as yours.

I will state it again. You don't need better rewards, you need better people. The game can't fix the attitudes no matter how much loot it throws at you.

Edit: For you guys who don't want to accept it either, It is true, You have a lot more flexiblity in a 25 man, as far as skill goes. It might appear to many that you only need 10-15 players ( aka, the " ten man + alternates/feeder raid, clique) but the healthiest groups trim and use all their players as best they can. 25s don't work if everyone is slacking.

[Deleted]

you are amazing. you know nothing about real raiding or merely desire to provoke.

here are some "push over" 25 man bosses:

baleroc: you needed a enrage strategy to kill him
majordomos: enrage kill
yorsashji: enrage kill (health was later reduced in 25 man due to the big rng influence of the black blob)
ultraxion: enrage kill
spine: massive stacking, health of tendon later reduced in 25 man
garajal: enrage kill

in 10 man raids, you didn't have to worry about the enrage of any of these bosses

but way more important: if 25 man is so much easier (or in your words:"tuned for 15 players and 10 dead bodies"), why are ther only 7% 25 man raids? strange, isn't it? one would think that this size would flourish given the succes of lfr and the level of player skill you experience there.

yeah, i can guess your answer: the all seek the challenge and would never consider taking the path of least resistance.

absolutely convincing...

there is only one problem: 25 man representation is 46% in the top 100, 30% in the best 1000 guilds, but if you check guilds ranked 9001-10000 only 2% are 25 man raids, want to guess how many there are in the bracket 24001-25000?

p.s. your quote (assuming it's real), were they referring to lfr?

That would prove it's easier...

[Verain]

It's still not really representational of the choices that a 10 man guild with a similar size roster can make, without cutting out / replacing raiders (which a 25 man guild is perfectly capable of doing), or putting the weaker links into their own team and having a stronger and a weaker team.

What are you even talking about? 10 man guilds weren't forced to do anything except get better loot in Cata, which they got for killing 10 man bosses. And 10 man guilds in LK and BC weren't eligible for the top loot- I would say anyone in a 10 man guild in LK definitely didn't want to raid 25s- and you could always start running with a second guild if you really wanted to, because the lockouts were not shared.

There is no real reason why your "team B" with the lesser progress, would have the lesser progress unless you didn't do what I just outlined. So I was slightly off base with your roster numbers, but my point still stands you cherry picked 10 players for "team A" which isn't really an option for a normal roster 10 man guild. For a 10 man guild that has never had a 25 size roster, you use what you have, or recruit better - exactly the same as you do in 25 man.

No, it's totally fucking different.

Because if you are in a 10 man guild and you need to recruit, you don't have your top 5 guys saying "You know, what FUCK ALL OF THIS LETS JUST GO DO 5 MAN DUNGEONS". And if by some chance they DID say that, they wouldn't get the best gear in the game as a reward for that. When a 10 man guild needs to recruit, it recruits. When a 25 man guild needs to recruit, the top half says "...or, instead of getting in some so-so players, training them up to our standards, and hoping that they are compatible with us, we could just split into two groups, and the first one instantly becomes way better and the second one stays about the same".

Whatever comparision your are making doesn't really make sense to me. I'm telling you why almost no fucking guilds could stay 25 when Blizzard bribed all of us to go to 10s. Argue how you like, but I made this exact same argument a whole bunch on the official forums back when this was in planning, and no blue ever popped in to comment on this argument (which wasn't JUST being said by me- a LOT of guild leadership chimed in on their "lets change everything about how you play this game" plan). The only people arguing the other side were delusional small guilds, ecstatic at the possibility of the one reason they were ever willing to consider running 25s being ridden into the ground. It went down exactly as we said, because nothing else could possibly happen. I think they breathe the rarified air of world first guilds and 25 man guilds that are all Blizzard employees and such. Recruiting for 25s once this change went through went from a solid mix of players to a few players who wanted the legit glory of 25s and a bunch of players who wanted to be in the "trainee" spot, which there isn't really room for in a 10s- you know, the guy you carry for three months before he either quits or turns into a real raider. The bulk of the players- the ones who were good players who just wanted to raid and get gear, in varying degrees of skill- they all were looking for 10s, because 10s are easier in every way that matters.

While there are some bosses that are mechanically harder in 10s than 25s, this is still rare enough that it doesn't matter- and more importantly, all it took was ONE tier (firelands in our case) where the difference is dramatic. Shannox and heroic Shannox on 10 were MUCH easier than their respective 25 fights, same with spider and bird bosses, and that's half the damned tier right there. Once you've mad that transition, you are stuck, and Blizzard will keep rolling tiers at you until you just can't justify running 25s for one single fucking tier and then welcome to two 10s.


I'm not MAD about this or anything. I really don't care. I enjoy 10s, and for years I enjoyed 25s. I still have mostly the same people around, and I like them too. I do feel a bit like I screwed over our second group, but their progression isn't really held back compared to when we ran 25s in this environment, while our first group can excel, and we run mix groups from time to time.

[Heathy]

snip

You mean they are forced to make decisions this way based on previously poor decisions, i'd argue they are losing just as many as they are gaining so, its not like they are doing things right.. i loved the older iterations of raiding, that changed, i left, i'd come back willingly if something about them changed.

25's were ok, but i did like to practice in 10s during my off days. that was replaced by looking for sleepingpills. its a downward slope, but if they brought back some incentive to do 25s again, maybe some ppl who actually enjoyed doing them would return for more.

the majority argument is a fallacy, i could argue that the 'majority' will suck up anything thrown at them simply because they don't want to accept the last 8 years a waste of time. in other words, there are large portions of players that play simply because they hope it will eventually mold into the game they want it to be, not necessarily because they love everything thats happened to it over the years.

[Espe]

i'd argue they are losing just as many as they are gaining so

Considering the fact that subscription numbers have soared since these changes have gone into effect - even with all the new, shiny games out there to play - I'd argue that you are wrong.

Extremely wrong.

[Radalek]

An extra piece of loot from each boss, three battle rezes per attempt and much, much less executional responsibility per person.

Sounds like plenty of incentive to me, especially for just having to find a few extra warm bodies. That is only if all you care about is loot, which seems to be the common theme among 25m raiders in this thread.

Much less executional responsibility in 25 man? Are you even aware how wrong you are. Take any really hard progress boss. You can't allow mistake or death of one single player on both 10 or 25 man. Can you tell me how much harder is to avoid that with 25 people? Ragnaros heroic for example. One death and you don't make the timer dps wise. One wrong movement in P4 it's a wipe. One person slightly late with movement, it's a wipe. Don't even let me start of the difference in coordination of 25 people vs 10 or the fact you had to 3 heal it in 25 man vs 2 healing it in 10. No matter how hard you are trying to justify it you can't, it will always be harder on 25.
And check wowprogress as well. Paragon took 19 pulls to kill Will of the Emperor heroic and they killed it with 8 people basically. They didn't even record the kill properly cos they didn't expect it to be that easy. Method took 150 pulls or so to kill it. And those are comparable players skill wise.

[Talen]

LFR is not raiding though. It doesn't have any of the characteristics that defined raids previously. They're basically just public group quests for 25 people that you cannot fail.

Regardless, it is still seen as a raid. It offers tier gear, it involves raid mechanics andmubers, it uses raid content.


What the graph doesn't show (amongst other factors) is the number of players who gave up what you would call "true raiding" because LFR was enough for them.

Only a complete trash dumpster kid would say that the elite is irrelevant.

Sorry to break it to you....but in many ways, they are. Blizzard is NOT going to design the game so a couple of hundred players can have a challenge the other ten million players have no hope of seeing. While the elite have their place in the game, it is the average player Blizzard needs to keep happy because the money they put into the game far outweighs that brought in by the elite. Player for player, the elite likely do have more weight....but as a group, it is the average players who are the important ones and the players Blizzard designs for.


Blizzard does not design for, nor balance around the elite. They even tried that to a small degree in Cataclysm, and listened to all that talk about the need and desire for truly hardcore dungeons. And didn't it backfire spectacularly on them?

Getting rid of shared lockouts would fix the whole "25s are dying" thing. If you can only pick one of course people will take the path of least resistance but, with a choice at least some people would do both.

Some? Perhaps. Enough? Unlikely. Especially if Blizzard put into play mechanics to address the problems Blizzard mentioned wrt this issue.


[QUOTE=Lightfist;19161915]The second you offer better gear or unique vanity items, you completely throw out the 'equal raids' philosophy.[q/uote]


If you want 10s to be seen as viable, then there can be no unique rewards, nor better rewards. You can tinker with almost anything else - to a degree - and get away with it, but offering better or unique won't work.

Honestly, if so many people like 25s, I don't understand why there's a problem getting them together. Is it sheer laziness?

To a degree, I suppose you could call it that. My own impression is that many raiders don't care overly much for format. They don't mind 10s or 25s in and of themseleves. They simply go for the most convenient for them. But 25s definitely have a workload that many raid leaders don't want to shoulder, which in turn means fewer opportunities for players to join a 25 man raid. Its also far easier to split a 25 into 2 tens than merge 10s into 25s because of that workload. Many others just prefer 10s. The scheduling issues can mean you may have 60 people who wnat 25s ona server, but only 20 can raid at a time. There are other factors which come into play. Whether you would call them laziness is debatable. It wouldn't be what I'd call a fully accurate term.

For a start, they should separate Realm First achievement.

Which were unified for a reason. Are those reasons still valid or important?

Didn't Al'akir teach Blizzard anything? Ragnaros?

Yes. A: Mistakes do happen and B: They need to do better in equalising raid difficulty. Especially on signature bosses.

I also recall heroic 25 bosses dropping quite a bit more gold than 10 man version.

They nerfed all gold income in the gamne. Which is a pity - they introduced several viable gold sinks but took away the gold for players to use them

There should no be discussion of tactics.

Tell that to writers such as Archidamos who constantly uses this point and similar to explain why 25s take longer and are slower to gear up.

That's not something Blizzard should solve

Nor is it something Blizzard can solve without massively incentivising 25s (reversing the issue) or switching to a one size model. Its something inherent in the format.

It's simple: go back to the reward system we had before. I don't remember anyone complaining back then.

I do. I recall the gripes about players being poached by the top guilds. I recall the complaints about 10s being perpetually stuck because they needed to recruit a new tank after they lost their previous batch to other guilds. I recall the condescension show to many 10s by many 25s.I recall players complaininh about the need to run the same raid 4 times a week.


I recall lots of issues with the raid model. I don't see most of those today....except the condescension of 25s towards 10s. That has lessened, but it still crops up in the "25s are the real raids" crowd.

Funny how the community recognized the logistical effort of 25 mans back then and just accepted that 10 mans got the lesser loot.

That was because logistics wasn't a problem. 25s got better loot because they were intentionally designed to be harder and more challenging. They didn't get better gear because 25s were logistically tougher...they got better gear because they were harder.

Now, if they were to go back to that, people would freak the fuck out. Shouldn't have changed it to begin with; It worked.

Actually, there was quite a bit wrong with the old model.

What company in their right mind would listen to 0.5% of their customers and ignore the rest!?

Blizzard. When they created the Cataclysm dungeons.

I still don't understand why people think 25 man needs incentives for an outside of game issue.

The workload for Raid Leaders of 25s is so great that it acts as a deterrent. The end result is many 25s split or aren't formed because players don't want to lead them. 25s don't need incetives, but raid leaders should get some recognition and/or help for the extra workload they put in.

LFR doesn't explain the 50% drop off with Cataclysm, that drifted down another ~10% over the expansion.

To be honest, the 50% drop off in T11 isn't really explained at all. The drop in MoP is relatively easy - its just been out a couple of months compared with the near year for T10, players are still gearing up, doing content, playing poet battles, have moved to LFR, etc. This? I wonder how much overlap in the shared lockouts is actually reflected here.....

You know, I missed a note about that graph. In Wrath there was 1.4M people doing 25mans.
In Cata, there was ~100k.
In MoP. There is 50k.


You can't tell me 1.3M people aren't doing 25mans anymore simply because they don't "want" to.

To be honest - it wouldn't surprise me if that was indeed the case. 10s have very strong factors in its favor....even leaving aside the logistical problems. There is no law stating 25s have to have 50% of the player base.

However, that said, if 25's had higher incentive to include the people who are doing 10-man for that single purpose

They kept word there is "incentive". If they did enjoy 25s, or they didn't care...they wouldn't need an incentive. They simply go for the first group that would take them and that was convenient for them.

That was a blue post SPECIFICALLY about LFR.
There was a blue post about 25man and 10man NORMAL/HEROIC MODES that stated in not many uncertain terms, that 25man was considered to be the harder form of raiding.

Then quote it, because noone else has seen it. Unless, like everyone else who made this argument before you, you are misrememberign GCs own subjectives comments on the issue.

I'm sorry, you must not be a heroic raider. It is not more difficult in a 10 man..

It is subjective. You can't say conclusively one fight is hard, because another will say he found it easy. And you'd both be right because the difficulty is subjective.


That neither side can agree is a good sign....it probably means Blizzard is actually close to having succeeded because the community cannot come to a consensus over the issue. Some will say a fight is hard, others will say its easy. When Blizzard has messed up (a certain Firelord for example) the community also comes to a consensus fairly quickly.


EJL

[Deleted]

Much less executional responsibility in 25 man? Are you even aware how wrong you are. Take any really hard progress boss. You can't allow mistake or death of one single player on both 10 or 25 man. Ragnaros heroic for example. One death and you don't make the timer dps wise. One wrong movement in P4 it's a wipe. One person slightly late with movement, it's a wipe. Don't even let me start of the difference in coordination of 25 people vs 10 or the fact you had to 3 heal it in 25 man vs 2 healing it in 10. No matter how hard you are trying to justify it you can't, it will always be harder on 25.
And check wowprogress as well. Paragon took 19 pulls to kill Will of the Emperor heroic and they killed it with 8 people basically. They didn't even record the kill properly cos they didn't expect it to be that easy. Method took 150 pulls or so to kill it. And those are comparable players skill wise.

Reminder - when talking about POPULARITY ISSUES progression raiding and HC modes are irrelevent.

[Verain]

An extra piece of loot from each boss, three battle rezes per attempt and much, much less executional responsibility per person.

None of which helps me recruit for 25s.

"On some bosses a fractional piece of loot drops for you! If Blizzard is feeling generous that tier, mostly it's 1 piece per 5 raiders period."

"Oh, come be bad! You have less executional responsibility!"

Forget that. Plenty of mechanics in 25 mans are "Have a ranged officer assign tasks out, and monitor those players. He discusses this with them individually, and reports back." And in 10 man these mechanics become "have the mage do it, or if he gets impaled, the shadow priest". Or the warlock, or whomever, because I don't have anyone in that group who is going to be confused past an attempt or two, and if a random mechanic goes out "You become a monster, with several new buttons!" this sort of thing is generally better spread in a 10 man, so you see it faster and get used to it.

Sounds like plenty of incentive to me, especially for just having to find a few extra warm bodies. That is only if all you care about is loot, which seems to be the common theme among 25m raiders in this thread.

It's not much incentive. It's essentially no incentive. Better loot is an incentive, because better loot is how this game is rewarded, it's the primary mechanism. Should I accuse 10 man raiders of "only wanting loot"? Because the entire position seems to be "keep loot levels the same because I can't stand getting less loot". Of course loot is important. Loot and progression are the rewards for raiding, and loot is honestly primary over the course of the whole playerbase.

[Espe]

Much less executional responsibility in 25 man?

Yes, exactly like the WoW Devs designed it and the vast majority of the playerbase experiences it.

Regardless of what fights your guild struggled with on 25m, 10m is unarguably harder to execute. Check my sig for details, or maybe just try a few 10hm before you get all geared up while coasting through 25s.