How would you like to handle the "gap" between LFR and Normal raiding?

[Firebert]

Beside the whole LFR justifies raids point is BS in my opinion.

Ion doesn't think it's BS and he's the lead encounter designer for WoW. Check my signature.

If that was the case why make raids back in vanilla or TBC at all i mean so few raided back then probably compared to the millions of LFR users.

Because a higher percentage of raiders saw the content. As soon as the content was being horribly underexposed, they brought out a queuing tool for it. See LFD.

Unfortunatly you can't compare the t14 and t15 numbers. in the way you have done. Basicly a lot of guilds, probably half, have thrown in the towel and just given up raiding. only 27k guilds have killed jinrokh.

You can. Your reason doesn't invalidate the comparison. Normal's too hard.

oh no gold we have to get gold.
We get gold thrown after us. Gems aren't that expensive, they are not even that difficult to get. That is just a very poor excuse.

Not when every AH player and his bots are sending the prices of gems to the moon.

[Deleted]

You can. Your reason doesn't invalidate the comparison. Normal's too hard.

How do you know? Did you ask them all? How many quitted because LFR is boring as hell and is a forced grind. How do you know they didnt quit because they found a better game? Maybe something else they enjoy more.

Also, no, you cant compare T14 and T15 numbers straight off simply because of ghost guilds. Simple as that.

[Firebert]

How do you know? Did you ask them all? How many quitted because LFR is boring as hell and is a forced grind. How do you know they didnt quit because they found a better game? Maybe something else they enjoy more.

LFR's not a forced grind.

Unsubs have affected the raiding population as I've mentioned before, but it should be doing it evenly.

Normal's too hard because only 17% of the people starting T14N are actually finishing T15N. That's not normal at all. For a medium difficulty you'd expect about half of them to finish it.

Also, no, you cant compare T14 and T15 numbers straight off simply because of ghost guilds. Simple as that.

There's ghost guilds for T15 too. Don't see what the problem is.

[Deleted]

You can. Your reason doesn't invalidate the comparison. Normal's too hard.

No you can't compare the numbers. You take 47 k guilds who started tier 14 and compare it with 7k who finished tier 15.

Difficulty in the tier is not reflected in the amount of players who started the previous tier.

Saying that tier 15 is hard is a matter of perspective for 25 man guilds in tier 15 apparently it wasn't since over 50% of them are 11/12 normal for 10 man guilds it is harder sinse only 50% of them are better than 5/12 normal. Can you measure difficulty like that I would say no, because 10 man guilds imo simply have more players and more guilds who are not that good.

I do aggre that normal mode is more difficult than normal 10 man mode back in wotlk. But your argumentation is wrong.

Basicly there is a difference between guild attrition and guilds dying and difficulty. I think a lot of those normal mode raiders also quit because ontop of daylies, valor capping and LFR they barely had time to do normal mode raiding. And quitting raiders leads to guilds dying, recruitment sucks atm if you hadn't noticed.

Ion doesn't think it's BS and he's the lead encounter designer for WoW. Check my signature.

sure Ion has said that half a year ago or something like that but that doesn't change that I think it is publicity bullshit. They made great raids before LFR and they haven't improved.

[Deleted]

None of the above.

[Nobleshield]

The vast majority either don't gem or don't gem "correctly" (that is, not what EJ/AJ/etc. explicitly state and the more hardcore players take as gospel). Normal modes should be balanced for ungemmed and unenchanted Warriors.

Now this I don't agree with. It should be balanced for someone who may know to gem/enchant but aren't going to use EJ/Icy Veins/Noxxic/Mr. Robot or other sites to pinpoint exactly what their best stats are. Since we're using Warriors as an example, normal mode should be balanced for the Warrior who might gem Str/Haste or, more likely, pure Strength (the idea being that they wouldn't really know to theorycraft between Mastery/Haste/Crit) instead of Str/Crit, and possibly be balanced around the green quality gems since it's unlikely the average player is going to be farming huge amounts of gold, and on my server at least (Turalyon, a fairly populated realm) the blue gems go for ~200g each depending on exact gem. I would go as far as to say that it shouldn't be balanced around enchants, because while gems are easy to see you should at least look at (since there are stats on the gear), it's not really the same with enchants as without actually knowing there are enchants, the average player wouldn't know about them. Same goes for Reforging. I don't think it should be based around somebody without any gems at all, because even the newest player can notice that their gear has these "socket" things on them, however it shouldn't assume using third-party resources to determine okay I need Haste to X%, then Mastery > Crit except with Y iLevel then I can stack crit, and if I get Z trinket and the legendary gem I can go 50/50 Mastery/Crit and make sure to pop cooldowns... etc etc. They also should not be balanced around food/potions/flasks either.

[Firebert]

No you can't compare the numbers. You take 47 k guilds who started tier 14 and compare it with 7k who finished tier 15.

Difficulty in the tier is not reflected in the amount of players who started the previous tier.

With the previous tier being still relevant due to no 5-mans with pre-T15 gear, the difficulty is reflected in the amount of players who started T14.

sure Ion has said that half a year ago or something like that but that doesn't change that I think it is publicity bullshit. They made great raids before LFR and they haven't improved.

They also made terrible raids before LFR (Firelands), of which DS was an improvement and had LFR. T14 was much better than it could have been because of LFR, and I'm sure T15 follows suit.

I don't know why you don't think so (apart from the difficulty).

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 10:54 PM ----------

I don't think it should be based around somebody without any gems at all, because even the newest player can notice that their gear has these "socket" things on them

But why would they spend ludicrous amounts of gold on something they can't keep? I'm going to assume that as this Warrior is average they also have an average amount of gold generation, which by no means covers the cost for gems.

[Nobleshield]

But why would they spend ludicrous amounts of gold on something they can't keep? I'm going to assume that as this Warrior is average they also have an average amount of gold generation, which by no means covers the cost for gems.

Which is why I said green-quality gems, which usually run a lot cheaper than the blue quality and so would be more likely to be found in an average player's gear, who doesn't have a lot of gold and doesn't want to play the AH or farm things (or even bother with professions, honestly, given how awful of a grind that is).

[Pua]

Well, you are the one that got 0 arguments.

Haha, you're a delight!

You've literally been proven wrong by several posters (Arothand, Osmeric, Braayden, myself), then tried to repeat what you said in earlier posts and hope nobody was looking. When that didn't work, it was time to wheel out the old "you can't 100% prove what you're saying is 100% correct, so it must be wrong" and ignore everything else that was presented analytically because it devastated your silly view that normal mode raiding is no harder than it was in previous expansions. All the evidence points to the opposite, and I even gave you a free lesson in data analysis.

A lesson you ignored and repeated a post from 10 pages ago. You couldn't make this up, seriously.

It's been seen so many times before you, and will be seen so many times after you; alas, you're simply too immature to just step back and admit to being incorrect.

This conversation is over.

"Gradually increasing debuff that nerfs the raid over time"

I haven't read the whole 11 pages, so this may have been said, but doesn't the gear do this naturally.

It's one of Ghostcrawler's points, and a perfectly valid one; however, it implies that people are killing bosses and, after Jin'rokh, they're not. The other snag is that deep, random loot tables can make this gearing painfully, painfully slow.

because you are the one who wants HC level raiders.

Why should everyone else have their game made pointlessly difficult so a few thousand HC hardcores can have a slightly easier time recruiting? Pure entitlement thinking!

Shhhhh!

[Deleted]

Haha, you're a delight!

Likewise

You are like a pigeon playing chess.

WARNING: Stay on topic and less insulting in some posts. -Azshira

[Deleted]

Yes, but you can legitmately say that heroics are made for the top end of players, which you can't do with normal modes.

Theres a big clue in the names of these things. Imagine making a suit that you claimed was for a normal person, but actually it would only fit someone 3 foot 6 tall. Any insistence that it was a normal suit most right thinking people would just laugh at. So it is with normal raids in wow. They clearly aren't for the average or normal player at all.

yeah sure sure, do you feel HEROIC after doing some 5 man?. Sorry dude but base your arguments on name is most retarded thing you said in this thread (and there was a lot of competition).
and btw, they didnt called it "avarage", maybe , just maybe normal wow raider isn't as bad as you think?

Warning: Tone it down a bit. -Azshira

[Firebert]

Which is why I said green-quality gems, which usually run a lot cheaper than the blue quality and so would be more likely to be found in an average player's gear, who doesn't have a lot of gold and doesn't want to play the AH or farm things (or even bother with professions, honestly, given how awful of a grind that is).

That should be OK. So long as the game doesn't mandate gems/enchants.

[NeverStop]

It's one of Ghostcrawler's points, and a perfectly valid one; however, it implies that people are killing bosses and, after Jin'rokh, they're not. The other snag is that deep, random loot tables can make this gearing painfully, painfully slow.
Shhhhh!

So you don't see that huge increase in DPS from when 5.3 launched? It's also set to "All parses" so inb4 "raidbots is biased; only meter padders and people who scumbag DPS are in that sample."

[Pua]

just stop it, it's pointless. Me and few came with this logic very often, but no - they dont want to get better, all they want is to hand them gear on silver platter, and pat on the back, how good raiders they are. All for nothing, thats their motto.

/sigh

Have you read nothing that's been said to you in this thread?

Comments like that indicate, very clearly, that you haven't.

Well it needs to change, because that's what's going to end up causing this game to collapse around itself.

Logically incorrect.

If you strangle new raiders in the crib, where are your players going to come from?

I explained this in this very thread, but it was a while ago - I think someone quoted it recently, though.

Essentially, your attitude is killing the pool you will one day intend to draw from.

You're killing your own guild.

Good luck with that.

[Osmeric]

So you don't see that huge increase in DPS from when 5.3 launched?

The increase looks like it's about 10%. Is that "huge"? Also, it's a median. If the bottom half hardly increased at all, it could still show that behavior.

Also, guilds that are downing more bosses will have more parses in the database. Those are also the guilds with better gear and performance. This will bias the results upward over time.

[Firebert]

yeah sure sure, do you feel HEROIC after doing some 5 man?. Sorry dude but base your arguments on name is most retarded thing you said in this thread (and there was a lot of competition).
and btw, they didnt called it "avarage", maybe , just maybe normal wow raider isn't as bad as you think?

It's the middle difficulty of three current difficulties, so you'd expect it to be an average difficulty.

Not, Easy - Near-easy - Hard, nor Easy - Hard - Impossible. Easy - Medium - Hard.

[Deleted]

What do you think of this :
Keep LFR and let it drop LFR loot. Make 10 man easy, let it drop LFR ilevel loot. Let 25 man drop higher item level gear and let 25 man be for those who seek a decent challenge.

nah thats really horrible idea. Majority of raiders would be screwed.
just look at my server progress for example http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/eu/silvermoon
out of 66 guild who killed at least 1 boss on hc in T15, only 10 are 25man. You can't say to all this people : "sorry but either you find 15 more people or you will be stack in inferior content with all the baddies and crap gear"

I'm all for new difficulity mode - easy (or fuck it, call it casual or adventure, so people wouldnt be butthurt over the name), something between lfr and normal, with LRF ilvl gear so there;s no need for yet another set of gear.

[Firebert]

Essentially, your attitude is killing the pool you will one day intend to draw from. You're killing your own guild.

This is a point I was also trying to make earlier when people didn't want to go recruit players from T14, and then complained about how recruiting was so difficult.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 11:21 PM ----------

I'm all for new difficulity mode - easy (or fuck it, call it casual or adventure, so people wouldnt be butthurt over the name), something between lfr and normal, with LRF ilvl gear so there;s no need for yet another set of gear.

Then what's the point of running that tier? If LFR gives the same rewards and is far easier then no-one will go to the Easy difficulty raid.

Which is why LFR10N would be better. Normals need nerfing, perfect time to introduce a queuing system into Normal mode raiding to get people progressing.

[Pua]

Likewise

You are like a pigeon playing chess.

Is that your only joke? You've said it multiple times... Which seems a bit of a habit with you, actually.

I figured it out!

You're a goldfish!

You can't actually remember anything you've written or read more than a page back!

In any event, like I said, we're done. I'm just going to ignore you from here on out. Feel free to take the last word.

So you don't see that huge increase in DPS from when 5.3 launched? It's also set to "All parses" so inb4 "raidbots is biased; only meter padders and people who scumbag DPS are in that sample."

There are a few problems with this:

1) The number of parses from the start of this expansion, to now (on a weekly average), isn't indicated. If the worse guilds stopped raiding, particularly prior to T15, then they will have stopped parsing; that could potentially leave a bias toward the better than average guilds who are clearing normal modes and gearing up.

2) New players recently coming to 90 simply ain't using World of Logs. Their parses are completely absent from that graph, which means it's missing the key demographic of this entire debate because THAT is where the gap is.

I appreciate the work you put in, but your graph is essentially meaningless.

That should be OK. So long as the game doesn't mandate gems/enchants.

Personally, I think the game could be a bit clearer in that regard. I remember a buddy started playing WoW, and he picked a hunter (I know, I know). He then logically assumed that putting intellect in his gem slots was a good idea because he wanted his Arcane Shot to do more damage.

Sounds daft, but you can see why stuff like that sometimes happens. Statistics like spirit don't make immediate sense to someone who wants to heal, because sustained throughput doesn't really have any reference point prior to normal raiding.

Blizzard have made a lot of strides with this, but it could still be better I reckon.

[Hughes]

I think Blizzard shot themselves in the foot.

LFR exists mainly so people can see all the content and get an intro to how the mechanics work. It's being used as a stepping stone (of sorts) to get gear to do normal. Anyways, the biggest issue I see here about the 'gap' is in normal the players must know the mechanics as it isn't as much of a faceroll as LFR.