Should previous dungeon/raid content be mandatory?

[Deleted]

That may be part of it, but the bit I don't understand is that this game costs quite a bit of money which people pay but then only play a small bit of the content over and over again and completely ignore the rest, and in some cases pay even more money to skip it.

The people who do that get to experience all the following raid content, its not like they are stuck with only one raid tier forever. Usually if a new player joins our guild he will want to find pugs to try out some of the previous tiers if he feels like it.

---->>>"""If he feels like it"""<<<---

This is the way it should be.

Working as intended.

(i do liek the idea of completely outdated raid content giving out other rewards then gear when it becomes obsolete tho(still gear, for transmog, but then also something more on the side)).

[rhoark]

I don't think old tiers should be mandatory, but I think they should stay more rewarding relative to the catch-up alternatives that come along. Blizz has a habit of providing catchup gear at tier N LFR/badge/scenario/quest/faceroll thats equal or even higher ilvl than tier N-1 normal raid gear.

[Deleted]

I don't think you even know what the term casual means. Casual =/= they only want to do LFR.

You miss the point. Most casuals go for some period without playing the game. When they return all they need to do is to run LFR and BOOM! They have all the gear they need to enter current Flex and later Normal.

[Alroxas]

If you look back at Classic, TBC or WotLK (even the year-long ICC patch), players had a lot more relevant content than we've got at the moment. Those who were running ICC with their main character tended to spend time in dungeons and previous-tier raids on their alt characters, and people tended to spend more time in leveling content too.

I can't speak for Classic or TBC but from what I saw of WotLK, dungeon running was mostly for the badges (the catch up mechanic at the time). I distinctively remember running just enough dungeons to get to the cap then doing something else.

Also pre-Cata, leveling content seemed tougher or at least longer but that could just be that now (two/three expansions later) players have access to more heirlooms that simplifies leveling. And, of course, leveling can now be skipped all together with those lv 90 boosts.

The problem in MoP is that the other 90% of the game doesn't really count for anything any more - where the catch-up mechanisms are designed to provide a super-easy-convenient way of skipping the huge chunks of earlier content; all of the content we had from 5.0-5.3 has its depth taken away. WoW has really just become one big "ending" without having the rest of the game to provide an ending for.

Which is why I'm for at least some partial requirement of doing previous raid content (within the same expansion) that is "unskippable" or at the very least more difficult to skip. Maybe a previous poster had it right, the ilv differences (and associated player power) is the issue that overpowers the need to run previous tier content. And adjustment there (while tough to bear for replacing raiders) would have the best (although unpopular) impact for the health of the game.

[zorkuus]

You miss the point. Most casuals go for some period without playing the game. When they return all they need to do is to run LFR and BOOM! They have all the gear they need to enter current Flex and later Normal.

In a perfect world maybe. As time goes on people start requiring more and more ilvl, to the point that you may have to outgear the content to get in.

[Ciddy]

I'm sort of on the fence. I don't necessarily think old content should be mandatory, but I hate how a raid becomes forgotten and useless after the next tier comes out. I can't think of a better solution for it, so whatever.

[Deleted]

You should at least have to do the previous tier (ToT) but not the tier before (unless it had a major drop rate increase)

The current system would be perfect if the timeless gear lost 4 to 6 iLvls so as ToT LFR was a bit more worthwhile

Although on the subject of the timeless gear I would of preferred a set of dungeons with catchup gear instead of token farming (still around the same ilvl I suggested so as not to make ToT lfr worthless)

[Alroxas]

I'm sort of on the fence. I don't necessarily think old content should be mandatory, but I hate how a raid becomes forgotten and useless after the next tier comes out. I can't think of a better solution for it, so whatever.

Brainstorming over here and I think I have a valid solution.

Take the achievement "Herald of the Titans" but also reward something fancy similar to what CM did for MoP.

Technically this is already in the game in the form of the achievements "Raiding with Leashes" and "Raiding with Leashes II" but those are more restrictive to pets.

Something more visual might be a good incentive, especially if it's a truly unique model.

[melodramocracy]

For alts and such? I think so. I'm in the rather small boat of players who think that your character is your representative of sorts, and progress when starting over should simply not be such a short road. The game isn't built in such a fashion though, so I digress.

On that same note, prior content should also be very worth doing for current players as well. This would probably involve altering loot tables, as well as requiring ilvl scaling, which I know is a pretty polarizing topic, so...

Perhaps at some point, raids will involve even more randomization than they do now... variable boss appearances, variable attacks, loot tables, occasionally seeing other patrols (or bosses) come in to help out, etc. It certainly would be an interesting twist, and keep things fresh for far longer.

[ReleaseDay]

No. def. not.

[Xires]

There have been many threads which argue that older content should not be rendered obsolete by catch up mechanics of a new patch. There are people however who say that if it weren't for the catch up mechanics, many players wouldn't stay in the game. So, what if the completion of previous raid tiers was mandatory for players to progress to the current tier? Maybe there could be a system that awarded players automatically gear for their class/spec if they were in an older tier, so that they don't have to do it more than 1-2 times.

Would you be in favor of a system like this?

Subs are constantly dropping so catch up mechanics aren't exactly "keeping" players. Also "giving" gear is not an option. They should simply take out catch up mechanics all together. No need to bring back attunements so that higher end guilds don't have to run old content to get someone attuned. This way if someone is undergeared...odds are they can be geared up quickly with there new guild.

- - - Updated - - -

No way. I for one don't want to ever have the situation of being stuck a tier or two below "current" without any real way to escape it short of guild hopping. As someone said early on part if the issue with requiring catch-up mechanics is that there's such a jump in iLevel between tiers - if it was much lower then you would not have a problem with it, as there wouldn't be such a huge disparity between them.

Telling people "Sorry, you need to spend time on X and Y content to see Z" isn't going to win anyone over.

There is a real way to escape it. Kill it and gear up from it. Then move on. Also with 4 difficulties now (holy crap...) and being able to que up for dungeons and raids.... it is easier to work your way up.

[zorkuus]

Subs are constantly dropping so catch up mechanics aren't exactly "keeping" players. Also "giving" gear is not an option. They should simply take out catch up mechanics all together.

If subs are dropping with catch up mechanics in place then wtf do you think would happen without them?

[Xires]

If subs are dropping with catch up mechanics in place then wtf do you think would happen without them?

I know what will happen without them...less down time and more raid time. Everyone is done with MoP because catch up mechanics make it possible to skip everything and go right to the end. You can either read the whole book or skip to the last chapter...which would you prefer?

[zorkuus]

I know what will happen without them...less down time and more raid time. Everyone is done with MoP because catch up mechanics make it possible to skip everything and go right to the end. You can either read the whole book or skip to the last chapter...which would you prefer?

The gaming community is much different than it was years ago. The casuals of today would make the casuals of yesterday look like hardcore players. And furthermore many who were hardcore in the past are now casuals. This idea would alianate a lot of players and what happens then? Sub losses. You're looking at this and completely unable to see it from any other perspective than your own hardcore view.

The main cause of sub losses on this scale is not because the game is too easy/end game is too easy to access but because the game is 10 fucking years old. The game peaked, you're living in a dream world if you think it will peak again to that extent, no mattter what changes they make.

[Deleted]

Maybe, just maybe, if Blizzard didn't spoil players with the issue of new content, we wouldn't be having this discussion now. Blizzard is so desperate to make players play the new content in order to justify its existence, that they don't care if content that took months and millions of dollars becomes useless in a single day. All to show players that they work hard to provide new content for the players that they themselves spoiled over the years.

[lettuce]

I feel that tiers should only be made obsolete (via catch up, relaxing of entry requirements etc) after two new tiers come out. So catch up mechanisms would exist later in the expansion but not until X.2 or so... and the catch up would only bridge part of the way. I feel like this is pretty much how it was in BC. Although, you still had to unlock everything no matter what back then, which sucked after a while.

More stuff to progress through made it feel more epic when you did get there. It also made fewer people at the pinnacle. Which made those who were at the leading edge even that more more awesome. All in all it improves the feel of the game, and I feel is part of what has been missing from the game more recently.

Sometimes not being able to get everything you want right away feels a lot better in the long run.

[Deleted]

OK I'll say again I think we're talking past each other a bit, I'm not disagreeing with everything you're saying, although I believe the MoP catch up systems are truly terrible compared with earlier catch up systems such as those in late TBC/WotLK.

As I said a few posts back, the game is designed for players to go through the entire journey. And most of us have done so over the course of the last ten years. However this does present a problem for people who haven't been along for that journey, and the question is how to ensure that they can enjoy their journey without negatively affecting the rest of us. The problem isn't the catch up mechanisms. The problem is the people who weren't around for that part of the journey, and the catch up mechanisms are simply the best way to deal with the problem.

Sure, but I think there are good and bad ways to implement those catch-up mechanisms. I think Blizzard actually managed to solve a lot of these problems a very long time ago without invalidating content. My main issue with the MoP catch-up systems is the fact they invalidate content by actively discouraging players from even bothering to do it. Yes, the content still exists, but why would someone spend their time there when the rewards from Timeless Isle and SoO LFR are so much easier, faster and more convenient?

Most players play the game for progression, therefore they naturally gravitate towards the most efficient way of catching up. Is it better to give those players endless repetition as their most efficient path to catching up? (especially where many of those players are already in the latest content with their main characters anyway), or is it better to give them an accelerated mechanism which encourages them and others who have the same level of gear/progression to experience all of the content, albeit at a faster pace?

Its worth remembering at this point that we will always see a wide spread of players - even right now there are literally millions of characters out there whose iLevel is a long way from being able to run SoO Normal. Except that any of those players aiming to reach SoO normal won't be getting their gear from the Outdoor quest chains, Dungeons, or previous-tier raids, they'll be grinding Burdens on the timeless isle and running LFR SoO instead. (Or maybe doing some PvP for honor gear)

[zorkuus]

And that's exactly the problem caused specifically by the new 5.2/5.4 catch-up systems. Blizzard already had a working solution to problems with players being stuck months behind everybody else - we saw it working during WotLK. The catch-up systems in MoP are just fixing something which wasn't broken in the first place.

The catch up systems in MoP didn't try to fix the old system. It's just that it's less work than designing whole new dungeons.

[Jokerfiend]

There have been many threads which argue that older content should not be rendered obsolete by catch up mechanics of a new patch. There are people however who say that if it weren't for the catch up mechanics, many players wouldn't stay in the game. So, what if the completion of previous raid tiers was mandatory for players to progress to the current tier? Maybe there could be a system that awarded players automatically gear for their class/spec if they were in an older tier, so that they don't have to do it more than 1-2 times.

Would you be in favor of a system like this?

If you asked this of me 4+ years ago, I'd say, is there any other way?

Now, fuck, NO. Just don't have the time to raid 5+ hours a night. Recruiting and trials were a pain in the ass, I wouldn't like revisited. It just doesn't make for a friendly game anymore. Sure it keeps content in rotation, but it limits the amount of "fresh" content one might see. I would rather wipe on progression and waste time there.

I DO like attunements, I just love the thought process that leads to them. It doesn't have to be the fuckfest of previous attunements. Why can't it be just complete all the quests in a certain zone? Or complete all 5man Heroics? Simple and makes sense to the game.

Make sure raids don't attune other raids. It's that simple, make it so you can complete them solo or in the Dungeon Finder. It'd be cool if you could get a cinematic with the attunements, as well. I'm not talking CGI production or anything, but like Character Creation cinematic.

There is just so much depth and storytelling they could do with attunements, that just lacks in today's era. Perhaps stuff like Hyjal/Raggy quest chain. It ensures the person knows WHY they are there, in story.

[Lunarien]

I think you should have to clear everything once