Blizzards 25 man mistake.

[MoanaLisa]

I wouldn't be so quick to define a raid purely in the context of difficulty. A raid is more than that. It's the environment, the story line, the number of bosses and a lot of other stuff that is much, much more than just co-ordination, complexity and skill. Lololola has a point in that by your definition of what a raid is--organization, communication, execution, reliability and skill--challenge modes are raids; which they are clearly not.

Defining what a raid is by simply looking at factors related to skill and difficulty really misses the point of what a raid is supposed to be: a more-or-less epic experience. I won't argue that LFR is a less-epic experience than heroic raiding but 'epic' in itself is defined by each person personally and is generally more than just a summation of difficulty factors.

[Deleted]

The entire point of this argument was that LFR raiding equates to normal raiding, and using LFR statistics to boost however many people are raiding.

LFR, fundamentally, is different from its counterpart regular raid. The only three things that remain consistent are the bosses' models/names, and the scenery. Every single other aspect has been changed to dumb down the content for a PuG. While I still feel that LFR != Raiding, I understand the viewpoint of those who do.

With that said, I don't agree that you can look at WotLK's raiding numbers and fairly compare them with the Drangonsoul+LFR numbers to determine if the WotLK system worked worse than the Cataclysm system.

Thing is tho, where do you draw the line? There's been incredible easy and incredible hard raids in the past as well. Or take vanilla. Some people call it epic and difficult back then, others say you could've completed the content with a few AFKs. I didn't play back then, so I don't know. And what about those people who played Normal to see the content? Are they alright with an easier difficulty?

[Hyrican]

25m Raids are dying not because of lack of players wanting to join in general but several barriers if your server happens to have no raidleader willing to raid 25m.

Servertransfers are not considered normal just for finding a raidgrp, because you definitely loose something along the way. Money, friends&connections, being known around the server, alts etc. The weight of what you loose is different for each and everyone. It is easier just to raid 10 or stop completely if you feel you do not want to loose that. In my opinion raiders should be able to find 25man raids cross-server over battletag.

The other important part are the available raidleaders on a given server. Most of the people don't want to step up and take responsibility for "all that sh*t!". Nothing wrong with that, but i think the amount of people willing to raidlead is steadily decreasing and in 25m faster. The boss encounters got more complicated, explaining the boss for fellow raiders is still a job for most raidleads sadly. Even back in classic many members never informed themselves. IF you experienced 10m raidlead and 25m raidlead... most of the raidleaders prefer 10m because they can concentrate more on playing. That is why raidgrps with steep requirements and harsh control can keep their raidleads longer before burning out. The people that upset the raidleads the most are sorted out so to speak. But not many people actually want to be that harsh to a fellow player. So the raidgrp is not as succesful and accepts more wipes because Player x has to learn the encounter. But the amount of wipes raiders are willing to experience is different for each. This leads to tension and drama in your raidgrp.... more work for raidlead. Finding 25 people with the same expectations is not easy, keeping them or recruiting new ones isn't either.

Until a raidleader can manage 25man as easily as 10m, the 25 format is going to shrink. Not many raidleads are willing to try 25m when they have a 10m running. The start of a 25m is much more complicated than 10m, amount of work and time is far greater and you can't concentrate as much on playing the game itself. The incentive before was clear, and worked for raiders and raidleads alike... the best items only in 25m and as an officer a higher chance of getting the Legendary e.g. Defining 10m and 25m an equal choice for raiders does not have to be true for raidleads also. The problem in getting a 25m going results in fewer people willing to try a new forming 25m raidgrp, with entry barriers like server change this is even more true.

Blizzard should help the raidlead in handling the 5-10 worst players in a 25man raid. Maybe the game must become aware of the playstyle of raiders and give hints, so the raidleader does not have to. Then the decision for 10m or 25m for a raidlead may not be as easy as it is now for most.

[Deleted]

Minus the aggression, I'm more or less in agreement with Valarius that if people want to raid 25's then it's up to them to set that up for themselves.

And people did, for years. Then Blizzard changed the raid model in a way that made 25 man raiding impossible on the majority of the servers. I was one of the people trying to keep an old 25 man raiding guild alive in Cata, and failed, as did every single other 25 man guild on my server. The reality is that when you provide an easier path to the same rewards, you obsolete the more difficult path.

It's only partly up to the players, the players rely on Blizzard to provide a game where it's practically possible to set up 25 man raiding guilds. That's what I paid Blizzard to do for many years and was happily raiding with 24 other people. Then Blizzard stopped providing me that opportunity in Cata and I stopped giving them my money. That's really all there is to it. If Titan comes out with a viable large group raiding scene, I'll probably be raiding there. If someone else comes up with a game that provides that, I will most likely be there.

[MoanaLisa]

There is a copious amount of generalization in your post, and things are never that simple. There, in fact are a lot of people that want to raid 25's. Now we can enter a 10v25 debate for the millionth time and we will come to no conclusion, but the fact is, it's A LOT harder to recruit for 25's, they are a lot harder to manage (both in and out of the raid) and they are prone to dwindling to 10s when you can't find more competent people which happens a lot. So, it's just easier to do it on 10.

This gets into another subject which is off-topic for here but raiding guilds have a share of the blame for the recruiting situation. Most recruiting is self-limiting in that part of the definition of a qualified applicant is someone ready to go on day 1. That's fine but when conditions change and recruiting becomes difficult the old ways of doing things aren't going to work very well.

Either that or they can shut down 25s because there won't be enough guilds to even do them. If/when that happens, that day will be very sad in WoWs history and will lead to more players leaving. People are forgeting that 25man guilds don't only have 30 people that raid. Friends, family are in there also, playing with people they know. They are the true pillars of community. Deleting or ignoring 25s could lead to a chain reaction making at least part of that number quitting. You can fit few 10s into one proper 25man guild.

I don't honestly think that at this point in time shutting down 25's is really an option that Blizzard is interested in pursuing. GC has been extremely clear about it. So I imagine they'll continue to poke at the system until they are either satisfied with it or decide to change their minds. As for raiders being pillars of the community and the rest I would advise you to step off the pedestal and join the rest of us down here on the ground. Today's game population for the most part couldn't care less. Many would just as soon avoid anyone with the sort of self-inflated ego that allows one to believe that they're a pillar of anything just because they do something in the game. That applies to PVP, PVE or anything else really. Self-righteous people who think they know what's best for everyone else are a giant pain-in-the-ass.

[Deleted]

They don't have to make 25 man raiding more rewarding. If you want to do it, do it. If you don't then go do 10 mans.
I don't understand why people have such a gigantic problem with the same loot rewards.

If you want to do 25man you can't you have to raid 10 man.
25 man recruitment IS dead,2 of the top 4 25 man guilds on my server crashed and burned (one of which was a well established guild from BC) from lack of new recruits.To do real progress you can't raid with 1 or 2 spots missing, or sub-par raiders, as such when a player missed a raid then that night it was farm or called. You would rarely get applications so you had to accept what you get, alot of them time its the poor ones. These guilds had progress that surpassed all but a few 10 man guilds, its just that people believe 10 mans are easier and won't raid 25 man since its harder, as such you had new 10 man guilds forming daily and getting people join.

A fair few 25man guilds have died not from people opting to leave to raid 10 mans because its more fun, but its a case of a 25man guild rotting, loosing players due to performance hits related to lack of applications and being a case of if you want to raid you have to go 10.


Blizzard need to decide 10, 25 or a new size. No and i mean NO, way you can actually improve 25 man numbers without harming 10 mans.
Blizzard screwed up when making 10 mans 'equal' to 25 man, it should of either been a shared lockout or same gear....not both.
Same gear, a 25 man would exist, you would of the the dedicated raiders run 10 mans to get gear meaning in the 25 man raids loot would go to those who only raid 25 man.

[MoanaLisa]

And people did, for years. Then Blizzard changed the raid model in a way that made 25 man raiding impossible on the majority of the servers. I was one of the people trying to keep an old 25 man raiding guild alive in Cata, and failed, as did every single other 25 man guild on my server. The reality is that when you provide an easier path to the same rewards, you obsolete the more difficult path.

The primary point I'm attempting to make this morning is a simple one: changing the conditions so that a majority of the raiding community feels like they're being forced back into 25's at the expense of 10's is a bad thing. Most of the 'incentives' I see proposed to get people back to 25's are pretty much in that vein. I love 25's too and haven't really raided very much since the system was changed. But that doesn't mean that I'm all in support of having Blizzard do something that makes people feel as if they being forced into them.

Once again, all things being relatively equal, people prefer the smaller size. That's sad but doesn't mean that I believe that it's in Blizzard's interests, or the game generally, to make people choose a raid-size format they don't prefer.

EDIT1: I suspect the eventual solution to all of this is something I hinted at earlier which is to enlarge the pool of interested parties greatly. That means something in the way of supporting cross-server functionality for 25-man raiding. Cross-server guilds are an important problem in all of that but somewhere in the future, I think this is the way things will go.

EDIT2: Meant to add that cross-server functionality for 25-man raiding would be for current tier.

[Deleted]

The primary point I'm attempting to make this morning is a simple one: changing the conditions so that a majority of the raiding community feels like they're being forced back into 25's at the expense of 10's is a bad thing.

You have no idea what the "majority feels". In WotLK the playerbase was given the option to do 10 mans, yet the majority continued with 25s. That tells you exactly how the majority prioritizes their preferences in wow: few ilvl on gear >> raid size.

Once again, all things being relatively equal, people prefer the smaller size.

And once again that's being asserted without any proof. The only thing we can conclude from current data is that the majority prefer the path of least resistance to the rewards. Things in the current model are not in any way "relatively equal". 10 mans have a huge advantage and provide the easier path to the rewards by far. True equality would be to provide two completely separate raids, one for 10 and one for 25 with a shared lockout. Only then could we start to draw conclusions what the majority thinks about the raid size.

That's sad but doesn't mean that I believe that it's in Blizzard's interests, or the game generally, to make people choose a raid-size format they don't prefer.

This is such simplistic and naive thinking. People don't just blindly choose "I want to raid with 9 or 24 other people". People tend to evaluate risk/reward or effort/reward, they also tend to look at the situation as a whole. And finally people do not know what they prefer, this is a fact established by tons and tons of peer reviewed research.

[Valium104]

I have a core I5, 8 gigs ram, 660 ti video card, 2x ssd hard drives. With that said. I still wont raid 25 man lag fests. Its bad enough doing Sha with 10 fps. In 10 mans, i hover around 30. Thats sad. And I can only imagine other peoples computers having to deal with 25 man and world bosses.

25 man raiding is dead and will stay dead. Hmm lets see. Do I want to depend on 15 other people, make things more difficult for the same rewards. Or do it with 10 people where I wont lag as heavily, have less stress and easier management including pugging. Yeah, Ill stick with 10 man raiding forever lol.

Are you god damn serious ? I have EXACTLY same computer, going with 40 fps at the highest intensive moments in my 25 man (mainly Elegon last phase). On topic : 10 man is an abomination which should die. If any, we need larger raids, tbh 20 man and 40 man would be best. Or pick one and only, but 25 man is still not epic enough. And people REALLY overexaggerate about "time and work investment" to make 25 man raids. There are really enough competent players for 25 man raiding, 10 is going easy way.

[Deleted]

Why cant we just have 40man raids? sure its harder to have that many people but hey, thats what guilds are for. You should find 40 people out of thousand and thousands of players in the server.

[Deleted]

Why cant we just have 40man raids? sure its harder to have that many people but hey, thats what guilds are for. You should find 40 people out of thousand and thousands of players in the server.

100m raids. Anything less I won't settle for. 100 man is the real deal. Rest's all fake, unworthy of the name raid, and shouldn't get much if any loot rewards to stimulate 100 man raiding. And the management skills required for 100 man raiding certainly make this size very unique and difficult. (Just ignore management skills don't scale well because that is irrelevant.)

[Chaochamp]

I wouldn't really call it a small group, at least, if my realm is a representation.
Five out of twenty top-guilds are all 25's.
I'm pretty sure that it hardly costs anything compared to the benefits for them.

What I am interested in is how much the 25's actually did decline.
I looked up some numbers on WoWprogress, using the number of guilds that killed the first boss on normal:

Wowprogress counts 60.000 25-guilds during tier 10.
It has 8000 guilds with Tier 11. 6.7k guilds with T12. 5.5k guilds with T13.
It has around 4000 guilds during tier 14.

But it also counts around 80.000 10-guilds in Tier 11 and 40k during T14.
T13 has around 40k too, where T12 still has 65k

So let's translate this into players:
ICC-Marrowgar had 1,5 million people raiding 25.
I left out the ICC-10 numbers because I find them almost impossible to calculate.
Tier 11 had 200.000 players on 25.
Tier 11 also had 800.000 raiding 10's.

Tier 14 has 100.000 players raiding 25 and 400.000 on 10.
Is that such a big problem?
You have 20% of all raiders on 25, that is hardly "dying out".

I like how you quote "dying out" as if I ever said that. Also, 20% is incredibly low and a waste to develop for.

That's like saying a Toyota isn't a car because you don't like the brand.

Perhaps if the car was missing its 4 wheels and engine, sure that analogy would work.

[MoanaLisa]

You have no idea what the "majority feels". In WotLK the playerbase was given the option to do 10 mans, yet the majority continued with 25s. That tells you exactly how the majority prioritizes their preferences in wow: few ilvl on gear >> raid size.

Once they took away the extra goodies from 25-man raids, people migrated to 10's like desert nomads running from a dust storm. You may not know for a certainty people's motivations but observation counts for something. I'm skeptical that what Blizzard is attempting in 5.2 will work but am willing to give it a chance to see. Increasing the percentage chance for obtaining gear that's a few ilevels higher will be an attractive option for some. It's easy enough to imagine that if it has little-to-no-effect that they'll push the drop rate for 25's up a bit. Again, I'm skeptical about it but we'll see. It's probably smarter that they go slow than do their usual routine of completely upsetting the apple cart with some extreme change and then ramp back.

[Valium104]

100m raids. Anything less I won't settle for. 100 man is the real deal. Rest's all fake, unworthy of the name raid, and shouldn't get much if any loot rewards to stimulate 100 man raiding. And the management skills required for 100 man raiding certainly make this size very unique and difficult. (Just ignore management skills don't scale well because that is irrelevant.)

Im up. No trolling. Planetside 2 is epic. WoW would rock the boat of all of the other MMO's.

[MoanaLisa]

Also, 20% is incredibly low and a waste to develop for.

If you feel that I suppose you should be happy and probably startled that raiding is around at all.

[Chaochamp]

Naah, you refuse to call it a car because it's a hybrid.
That's the perfect analogy :')

Like it or not, a raid is an instance for more than 5 people.
That makes LFR a raid.

Except a hybrid performs the same as a real car. LFR does not perform the same as a regular raid. So no, that analogy is flawed too.

Edit: Forums are being very buggy atm, my posts keep messing up for whatever reason.

[Chaochamp]

So.. what you are trying to say is this: "It's 'stupid' to refuse to call something by its name, just because one dislikes it?"

Just that we are clear on this..

I'm trying to say that LFR is not on par with regular raiding, while a hybrid vehicle is on par with a regular vehicle, which is why your analogy is fundamentally flawed.

[MoanaLisa]

Why should development time go towards something only 20% of the raiders are going to do? Especially when the 80% gets affected by it. I don't know how Blizzard goes about their raid-tuning process, but I'm sure it takes up time that could be put into making the raid better as a whole.

You missed my point entirely apparently. Why should development time go towards raiding at all given that for most of WoW's 8-year history something much less than 20% of the people subscribed were doing it? Imagine if Blizzard had taken that line at the end of Wrath.

Imagine all of the raid bosses since T11 converted into single-boss dungeons. That would make a lot of non-raiders very happy. I mean given that logic, we'd be getting 12-13 new themed dungeons in 5.2.

You should be happy enough that Blizzard doesn't develop their game entirely based on percentage cutoffs.

[Deleted]

Blizzard has defined "raid" as an group of more than 5 people and "raid instance" is instance that is designed to be an encounter for more than 5 people.

[bufferunderrun]

snip

the big mistake imho was the introduction of the 10/25 man selection for every raid, the old tbc way was perfect with 10man intended to be middle ground btw 5 man heroics and 25 man. but we know that blizzard really like to do thing in a complicate way.