Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[melodramocracy]

No it isn't illogical at all. The logical thing is to make normal raiding medium. Medium relative to what the vast majority of the raiding player base can do. Medium relative to what the game has had in the past. Medium relative to what other video games call Medium. yes it's a large range of player skill, the logical thing would be to tune normal content to grab a large chunk of that player skill. the logical thing would be to provide a normal raid that provides some challenge and some ease. the logical thing would be to allow for wider tuning GIVEN the large range of player skill. The logical thing is basically the opposite of everythign they've done, well up until today when they hot fixed the shit out of bosses.

The game in the past hasn't had 3 effective difficulty levels. The LFR is for the vast majority now. And while I will agree that bosses in any given tier should ultimately be more difficult as you go, the rest of your post points to a bigger problem:

If you think expecting a difficulty change of this degree was only logical well then you have your answer where all the raiders have gone. They said fuck "logic". In the end it's a snowball effect and it just piles on and on and less and less players will run normals.

Fewer players will bother with normals no matter what you do, because the perks of LFR vastly outweigh the negatives of it as it's currently implemented. Across the board, guilds are less important now than they ever were, and raiding guilds even more so.... and that really is the crux of this entire issue.

[Glorious Leader]

The game in the past hasn't had 3 effective difficulty levels. The LFR is for the vast majority now. And while I will agree that bosses in any given tier should ultimately be more difficult as you go, the rest of your post points to a bigger problem:



Fewer players will bother with normals no matter what you do, because the perks of LFR vastly outweigh the negatives of it as it's currently implemented. Across the board, guilds are less important now than they ever were, and raiding guilds even more so.... and that really is the crux of this entire issue.

Actually yes it did. It had it in Dragon soul. It also had t14 which in my opinion was over tuned (garalon and elegon primarily) but was FAR FAR FAR FAR better tuned (especially ToES) than ToT. In fact I would argue ToES is closer to normal, although not quite and ToT is off the fucking wall. The problem was that ToES was the last raid to come out and the damage was done in HoF. Effectively what your saying is that the vast majority of raiding players are only fit for easy, or your saying lfr is normal difficulty now. I don't think the developers agree with this and that's why you see hotfix nerfs just over a month since the boss has come out. In the short term I would expect more of this, in the long term I would expect them to take a serious look at who exactly normals are for. If they aren't going to tune normals for a large chunk of the raiding population (as they should in my opinion) then it becomes a question of sustainability both from the perspective of actually making that content and also how sustainiable it is for guilds to run it. The rest of my points don't present a bigger problem, they represent the logical conclusion you should come to if you want more players to participate in normals. You make the more accessible or watch them continue to dwindle away in numbers until it becomes very difficult to recruit and potentially even to the point where theirs no sense in making normal raids anymore.

Furthermore I don't accept the proposition that we should have expected an increase in normal difficulty as a logical outcome of lfr. The goal of LFR was to get people who normally wouldn't raid to see that content because their was such a huge chunk of people who weren't raiding and it was uneconomical to produce content that so many players weren't seeing either because of difficulty concerns or schedule concerns or for whatever reason. Well alright that's all well and good but that has NOTHING TO DO with players who were already raiding normals. Why should they expect a sudden increase in difficulty because a new feature has come out to expressely pull in players who didn't raid normals already. I doesn't add up that just because LFR is easy normal should be harder. I don't see the causation or that their needs to be one. LFR wasn't intended for players already raiding normals but because of the degree of difficulty of normals (and yes the convenience of lfr) it has now sucked up a large chunk of them.

Your position is defeatist and it only serves to chase more players away. I agree some loss is expected however making normals hard only exacerbates the situation and ONLY pushes out players who would normally have done normals and even heroics in the past away from running that content. The CRUX of the issue is Blizzards seeming want to appeal to those who consume the most content and are the most hardcore about it.

No matter how you slice it NORMAL is not medium by any stretch. Medium ought to be able to be achieved by the vast majority of players raiding. It currently isn't, unless you want to call lfr medium difficulty. Just beacuse you have three difficulties doesn't mean one of them has to be medium. Their is nothing that says you can't have easy, hard and harder. Theirs 3 there and one is in the middle but I don't see medium (relative to what the player case can do or what happens in other games or relative to past raids).

[Deleted]

The game in the past hasn't had 3 effective difficulty levels. The LFR is for the vast majority now. And while I will agree that bosses in any given tier should ultimately be more difficult as you go, the rest of your post points to a bigger problem:



Fewer players will bother with normals no matter what you do, because the perks of LFR vastly outweigh the negatives of it as it's currently implemented. Across the board, guilds are less important now than they ever were, and raiding guilds even more so.... and that really is the crux of this entire issue.

But a level 25 guild with all its perks is rather nice to have while farming or levelling an alt.
But yes raiding guilds are less important now, assembling a team to do pve content is also less important now, the game does it for you and you can happyly stroll along sightseeing LFR town and call yourself the contentmaster or something like that.
And imo that is a boring single player road to go down.

[celinamuna]

I have to chime in on this, something struck me about 10 pages back about the need for 3-4 'easier' bosses at the start vs the ONE this tier, and I think that is pretty spot on. Looking at my crap ass server we have 2 guilds that were decent. The top one eventually cleared all the content on heroic pre 5.2, the #2 guild was close but I dont think they got heroic sha. Either way, these 2 guilds consist of the majority (but not all) of the 'good' raiders on our server. So far this tier that #1 guild is at 1/13H and the 2nd guild is at 6 or 7/12N. Looking at their rosters, I don't see any key players missing, I've raided with most of them in one way or another over the years and they are mostly still playing, just not doing nearly as good as they did last tier or even in cata. And it's not just them, the guilds that were stuck on garalon (without counting ones that skipped to terrace and then came back for it, a lot of 3/6 HoF, 3-4/4 Terrace guilds) last tier, are now all stuck on Horridon, just like the old gypsy woman said they would. And it's pretty sickening, for a new tier to drop and have it require heroic gear from the previous tier for NORMAL, else get stuck on the 2nd boss, its stupid. And to make it worse Blizz is adamant about that not being the case. None of the raiders in my team had a 4pc tier bonus without half of it being LFR gear at best. Some got leggs/hands from sha, i didnt, i had 496 pants and the rest 483 tier peices. Most of our weaps were LFR sha touched, everything else was ok give or take some bad luck with trinkets. Take that gear into ToT and Horridon becomes difficult. The challenge is nice, but it would be nicer to get in a couple bosses before such a large roadblock.

That sounds a lot more like player skill issue. Without considering myself a hardcore raider, or raiding with people who consider themselves "hard-core" i don't think I've run into "dps don't have enough gear || tanks || healers". The reality is that horridon is def doable in 496 ilvl gear, most likely even doable in 489 gear (or less than that, but at that point you really need to rethink why you're expecting progression in ToT). It's just that unlike most of the normal fights on previous tier this is where the gloves come off. You need to dispel, you need to interrupt, you need to manage cool downs.

Granted with better gear you can make up for some of the fuck ups, but it is doable.

[Deleted]

That sounds a lot more like player skill issue. Without considering myself a hardcore raider, or raiding with people who consider themselves "hard-core" i don't think I've run into "dps don't have enough gear || tanks || healers". The reality is that horridon is def doable in 496 ilvl gear, most likely even doable in 489 gear (or less than that, but at that point you really need to rethink why you're expecting progression in ToT). It's just that unlike most of the normal fights on previous tier this is where the gloves come off. You need to dispel, you need to interrupt, you need to manage cool downs.

Granted with better gear you can make up for some of the fuck ups, but it is doable.

Doable isn't the same as well designed. it also isn't the same as probable or even possible for the playerbase.

There are two ways of looking at this - one is that the encounters are a fixed point in the universe which the players have to bend themselves to fit into, or you can see the playerbase as having intrinsic ability levels themselves and therefore they require content tuned for them by the human beings who design wow to be played by those people.

One of these reflects the reality of the situation, one of them does not. Can you guess which one is the right one?

[rhorle]

Because it's to easy. That's the point. Normal should equal MEDIUM. It doesn't.

But what they were asking for wasn't "medium". They don't want any appearance of a challenge. They just want a little challenge until they learn the fight then be able to farm it problem free after 6-10 attempts. That isn't medium, that is "easy" with LFR being "super easy". I think that points to the problem right there. What is wrong with a challenge? Why are people raiding only to Win instead of to raid? Wiping is a part of raiding and you shouldn't raid with out the expectation to wipe.

If you don't want to wipe ever then you need to do one of two things; Get better at the game or don't raid. You even wipe in LFR and I see people that leave groups after one wipe which is baffling. Even more so when they are DPS and likely waited an 45-60 mins in the first place (going by estimated queue times I see on my when I queue)

[celinamuna]

Doable isn't the same as well designed. it also isn't the same as probable or even possible for the playerbase.

There are two ways of looking at this - one is that the encounters are a fixed point in the universe which the players have to bend themselves to fit into, or you can see the playerbase as having intrinsic ability levels themselves and therefore they require content tuned for them by the human beings who design wow to be played by those people.

One of these reflects the reality of the situation, one of them does not. Can you guess which one is the right one?

By doable i mean as in < 30 wipes. Which i would consider is normal amount of wipes for a progression kill. I'm not talking about <30 wipes from Method or BL or w/e other "top" guild there is. I'm talking about < 30 wipes from a guild that full cleared normal last tier.

[rhorle]

LFR isn't a place you can take 9 friends and shoot the shit with over vent on a weekend. It's a place where you can have 9 friends and 15 complete strangers, many of whom are dickheads. It's not a place you can take a green geared mate along to so he can get some gear. And neither is normal mode. Theres a gap between LFR and normal mode which didn't used to be here, doesn't have to be there and in all honesty probably shouldn't be there.

You and your 9 friends can easily take your green geared friend along. It requires you to be able to carry that green geared friend which doesn't seem to be something you want. You seem to want to people able to mindlessly breeze through things as if it was LFR but only with your friends. That is fine but normal has never been that easy and always required that carried people get carried.

With the raid wide buff in tier 14 and the other changes your green geared friend won't remain so for long.

[Glorious Leader]

But what they were asking for wasn't "medium". They don't want any appearance of a challenge. They just want a little challenge until they learn the fight then be able to farm it problem free after 6-10 attempts. That isn't medium, that is "easy" with LFR being "super easy". I think that points to the problem right there. What is wrong with a challenge? Why are people raiding only to Win instead of to raid? Wiping is a part of raiding and you shouldn't raid with out the expectation to wipe.

If you don't want to wipe ever then you need to do one of two things; Get better at the game or don't raid. You even wipe in LFR and I see people that leave groups after one wipe which is baffling. Even more so when they are DPS and likely waited an 45-60 mins in the first place (going by estimated queue times I see on my when I queue)

See you had a point till you said "if you don't want to wipe ever". Now it just becomes a ridiculous straw man. No I don't want to not wipe ever. And nothing is wrong with challenge but ALL THE EVIDENCE (including the hot fix nerfs today) suggest the raid isn't approaching medium AT ALL. Christ I'm so sick of this constant strawmaning. You know I raided at all levels of play for almost 7 years now. I raided heroics in wotlk and heroics in cata, as well as normals and raids in bc and in vanilla. I HAVE NEVER felt so god damn flustered as I did in normal tortos. I have never felt so god damned BUSY just overwhelmed with constant shit being thrown my way. I have never felt like my ability to play this game should be called into question, nor has it ever been. On that fucking turtle even I was second guessing my ability to heal and to raid at this level. That's not the kind of challenge I want. That's demoralizing and overwhelming and just exhausting.

Try not to misunderstand me. I'm for some challenges. I'm not for the second boss being a massive cock block or even the second wing being a massive cock blobk. I'm all for the final bosses and the heroic modes being difficult because well in the latter case we don't care to run heroics and in the former aspect we do want SOME sense of achievement and "progression". In laymans terms we want MEDIUM difficulty. I honestly don't know how else to express it. Content that is hard enough to push back but also that can be overcome in a decent amount of time spent without feeling exhausting.

Get better at the game or don't raid is where the raiders went. And then when you need to recruit someone you can ask where have all the raiders gone?

[Deleted]

But what they were asking for wasn't "medium". They don't want any appearance of a challenge. They just want a little challenge until they learn the fight then be able to farm it problem free after 6-10 attempts. That isn't medium, that is "easy" with LFR being "super easy". I think that points to the problem right there. What is wrong with a challenge? Why are people raiding only to Win instead of to raid? Wiping is a part of raiding and you shouldn't raid with out the expectation to wipe.

Who knows what is wrong with a challenge? Fact is though that players on the whole aren't interested in dozens of wipes before shit dies.

The problem here is you don't want to accept that is what other people are like. It's a bit odd to demand that other players try harder to beat the game when you won't try harder to understand other players.

If you don't want to wipe ever then you need to do one of two things; Get better at the game or don't raid. You even wipe in LFR and I see people that leave groups after one wipe which is baffling. Even more so when they are DPS and likely waited an 45-60 mins in the first place (going by estimated queue times I see on my when I queue)

Why is it baffling?

Wiping over and over is (for most people) dull, repetitive shit that is happening at the same time as they are supposed to be having fun. For some other people wiping over and over is the prelude to a good feeling when the boss finally dies.

People are different. Who knew! There are more of the "fuck this, boring" people than "ooh yeah, beat me again Raggy HC!" types. Again, who knew!

it is what it is, accept it please.

[rhorle]

The new 552 valor gear is fucking backwards dude. I've bought the first 2 pieces and this week i'll have the 3rd but I won't have the rep to buy anything more. It's a dead end. The guilds who need the valor gear aren't gonna get the rep to buy the valor gear because their stuck on whatever boss. The guild who don't need it get all the rep and are in heroics now and don't need the valor gear by and large. It's a stupid unnecessary gate.

Then clear LFR. You can gain the maximum amount of rep for the week by doing LFR. A heroic kill, a normal kill, and a LFR kill all award Reputation but you can only gain it once per week per boss. So a normal and a LFR kill won't both grant rep. Just because a group can clear normal mode content doesn't mean that a group member will get all of the drops they need. Valor gear can be just as useful to them as it is to a person that can't clear the content.

Rep is not an unnecessary gate anymore then the requirement to gain Valor is. They are both ways of limiting a product and providing a reward for doing something. Valor gear despite being welfare in the past was never meant to be which is why it has changed to a "in case you never get a drop" type of system in MoP. Instead of the place to gear up like it became since first introduced in Burning Crusade.

[Glorious Leader]

Then clear LFR. You can gain the maximum amount of rep for the week by doing LFR. A heroic kill, a normal kill, and a LFR kill all award Reputation but you can only gain it once per week per boss. So a normal and a LFR kill won't both grant rep. Just because a group can clear normal mode content doesn't mean that a group member will get all of the drops they need. Valor gear can be just as useful to them as it is to a person that can't clear the content.

Rep is not an unnecessary gate anymore then the requirement to gain Valor is. They are both ways of limiting a product and providing a reward for doing something. Valor gear despite being welfare in the past was never meant to be which is why it has changed to a "in case you never get a drop" type of system in MoP. Instead of the place to gear up like it became since first introduced in Burning Crusade.

Rep is totally unnecessary gating. The requirement to gain isn't a a gate, it's a cost theirs a difference. The cost could be gold and it wouldn't be a gate. now the cap on valor is a gate but the actual valor itself is just a cost and that's fine.

I'd love to clear LFR. When will I be able to clear it? Most of the bosses for LFR haven't been available for the past month and in fact if I do lfr then I basically rob myself of the rep from the first couple of bosses. The only bosses we've progressed through at this point. By the time I have the rep I am less likely to need the gear (having downed the bosses already with my current gear) then if I hadn't downed the bosses. So like I said the guilds who do need the gear are boned and the guilds who've already beat the crap out of the raid and don't need the gear and 9 times out of 10 just bank it anyway are just rewarded for it. It's backwards and unnecessary gating.

[Firecrest]

Sadly that's the only kinda debate were gonna get I think. Histrionics and hyperbole.

Okay. I follow... Sounds good. Given your distain for it, I assume your argument will be bassed on factual data and free of ridiculous exageration.

The gap is so wide between lfr and normal mode it feels roughly akin to dropping a pencil down a mine shaft. In fact it feels greater than the gap between normals and heroics in previous expansions. It would be closer to call LFR the new normal and everything else just hard. Closer but not exact. Normal should have some challenge and lfr is a pushover by and large but the alternative normal raids are to hard. The concept of medium difficulty escapes Blizzard.

Uh....

[Glorious Leader]

Okay. I follow... Sounds good. Given your distain for it, I assume your argument will be bassed on factual data and free of ridiculous exageration.



Uh....

It's not an exaggeration. That's how I feel and I think the evidence suggests the gap is indeed that wide. If LFR was harder it wouldn't be. Or if Normal is easier it wouldn't be. But the difference is quite stark. It's a spike as opposed to a gradient curve which it should be.

Please try again though, it was amusing to watch you flail around like that.

[Osmeric]

Okay. I follow... Sounds good. Given your distain for it, I assume your argument will be bassed on factual data and free of ridiculous exageration.

His arguments are largely free of ridiculous exaggeration. They don't need to be dry compendiums of data to avoid hyperbole.

[Crashdummy]

But what they were asking for wasn't "medium". They don't want any appearance of a challenge. They just want a little challenge until they learn the fight then be able to farm it problem free after 6-10 attempts. That isn't medium, that is "easy" with LFR being "super easy". I think that points to the problem right there. What is wrong with a challenge? Why are people raiding only to Win instead of to raid? Wiping is a part of raiding and you shouldn't raid with out the expectation to wipe.

If you don't want to wipe ever then you need to do one of two things; Get better at the game or don't raid. You even wipe in LFR and I see people that leave groups after one wipe which is baffling. Even more so when they are DPS and likely waited an 45-60 mins in the first place (going by estimated queue times I see on my when I queue)

No one is asking not to wipe.

What we are saying is that normal skilled people should be able to clear a tier in 5 months with item upgrades nerfing it. This wasnt true in T14 and it wasnt going to be true in t15.

5 months for a tier is not equal to not wipe a single time.

[SodiumChloride]

Like it depends who does ptr testing primarily. See the key isn't to then tune based solely on the ptr I guess. Like if the folks doing shit on the ptr are the cream of the crop or better than the average bear your goal should then be to detune a little bit for normals so that it becomes more accessible. I think when they tuned ToT it was on the impression that it was your everyday raider on the ptr and if they could do it well it ought to be tougher.

It's not just the tuning though. Theirs other things as well. Durumu is the worst, I can't believe that mechanic left testing like that.

I'm sure they take into account the type of people who do PTRs. Still it leaved them with no data about the avg player's performance.

The best they can do is make an educated guess from the hardcore raider's performance.

[Otimus]

All normal raiders want is some places that requires a little bit of teamwork while they shoot the shit over vent on a weekend.

You've got this idea that they are looking for a challenge and it simply isn't so. A raid you can learn to clear in one or two weeks and then farm the shit out of for a few months so all your guild/alt is geared up is just about perfect for such players. Any more than 6 -10 wipes on anything is way too much for most players.

The average normal raider certainly doesn't want to be sinking 70 wipes into garalon type encounters.

Controversial opinion here:

If you are looking for a challenge, why in the ever loving hell are you playing an MMO? Mechanically, and systemically, it's not a very challenging genre. Almost ALL of it is organizational, knowing what to do, when to do it, and being able to hit the right buttons. The skill cap, relative to other things, is very low.

You want a challenge? Go play some oldschool NES games, Ninja Gaiden, Dark Souls, or what not. Not something who's "challenge" is entirely dependent on other people "Knowing" what to do.

[Glorious Leader]

Controversial opinion here:

If you are looking for a challenge, why in the ever loving hell are you playing an MMO? Mechanically, and systemically, it's not a very challenging genre. Almost ALL of it is organizational, knowing what to do, when to do it, and being able to hit the right buttons. The skill cap, relative to other things, is very low.

You want a challenge? Go play some oldschool NES games, Ninja Gaiden, Dark Souls, or what not. Not something who's "challenge" is entirely dependent on other people "Knowing" what to do.

I would say those games in alot of instances provide artificial challenges. The biggest challenge in ninja gaiden was fucking around with the stupid camera angle. Like yea it was challenging but felt cheap because it wasn't your play was bad you just got boned.

[sarahfireworks]

If you are looking for a challenge, why in the ever loving hell are you playing an MMO? Mechanically, and systemically, it's not a very challenging genre. Almost ALL of it is organizational, knowing what to do, when to do it, and being able to hit the right buttons. The skill cap, relative to other things, is very low.

I dunno, there lots of challenging things in MMOs, both in WoW and in other games out there. Granted there's a lot of content in WoW and other games that doesn't push most people, but there are challenges to be found if you look for them.