A Potential Fix

[Talen]

So how should we reward these 25man raids that have to go through more intrinsic methods to setup a raid?

Ideally? Not at all.
The question is whether you want to drive people to 25s by incentivising them to do so, or whether you just want to ensure that the systems are as equal as possible so players have a choice that suits them, and is free of any outside factors - they raid the format they prefer.

- Well there is already a system that provides them with more loot per player, 6/25 instead of 5/25 (2/10). This is good but could use a little bit of tweaking, 25mans should have 5 loot drops from the boss initially that is based on RNG, and have the 6th loot be chosen by the raid leader, so it gives a complete advantage in gearing that is not even based on RNG.

This ties in with another argument I've seen starting to raise it's head recently - how desireable is RNG in the game? It provides excitement, it provides surprise, you get a great feeling when that one piece of loot you really want drops...but it can also be hugely frustrating. More of an issue with some groups than others though.

- There is also the notion of having 1/2 upgraded loot drops for them in 25mans, and 0/2 in 10mans. This is a lot trickier because it penalizes 10man raiders for something they have no control over. So what if a system was implemented that gives 10man raiders a time constraint; that is to say, for every boss 10 man raiders kill, their weekly valor cap gets raised by "x" amount. Obviously they don't get this VP for free, it just raises their cap, they still have to do dailies/ heroics to reach that cap before the week ends. Basically, it gives them the "1/2" loot but they have to work more for it (or maybe have an incentive to do dailies, since that should cap them out if done daily).

Not really viable. One thing Blizzard tries to do is balance the gear acquisition rates. They WANT the content to take up a certain amount of time. Its one reason they like the RNG system currently in place.

The problem with having the gear already or partially upgraded is that it bypasses some of this. 1500 VP is a week and a half of VP. It reduces the time needed to fully upgrade and acquire your kit. Further, if you allow 25s to get it while ensuring 10s don't you create an imbalance in levelling speeds....which is one reason the shared lockout exists. And while you do propose a mechanic to allow 10s to also acquire enough VP to compensate, that would only be partial and run into another issue Blizzard pays attention to; VP caps exists to stop players burning themselves out on content immediately.

Personally, if you wanted to incentivise the entire raid, as opposed to putting in place mechanics to ease the logistics issues, then a simple VP buff that applied to 25s would probably be sufficient. Same cap, but fewer runs, dailes, etc needed.

EJL