Are world-first raiders happy?

[Trellan]

This is something I've been wondering for a while. I might be posting it in the wrong place, but I'd like to get general thoughts on this.

For most of us, it takes us weeks or months to clear an entire tier. We might kill one or two new bosses per week. Getting gear every week helps us make progress, and we chip away at the instance boss-by-boss. "Casual" guilds like mine that raid <10 hours per week won't even down Mythic Blackhand while it is still relevant. Assuming we're happy with the instance, Blizzard has created a sufficient amount of raid content to satisfy our needs.

However, guilds like Method and Paragon complete all of the Mythic content in about a week. That's it; after that, they're done. They'll spend the rest of the tier gearing their players in preparation for the next tier, but there are no new challenges. This seems broken to me.

Wouldn't the best players in the world also want content that lasts weeks or months, and provides new challenges during that time? Would they appreciate being in the situation the rest of us are in, where they get stuck on a boss and need to gear up to get over that hump, rather than just keep trying with the gear they have all in week 1 until they beat it? I realize that in order to achieve this, Blizzard would have to add an additional raid difficulty that only <100 guilds would ever see. But is this something progression raiders even want?

Just curious idle musings on my part.

[Xenryusho]

There will never be content that the world first players will be able to play for months unless it was procedurally generation (like diablo grifts) and eventually became a test of rng or outright impossible to complete with optimal play and top gear (like grifts). Reason being is that they're have the skill, time, and resources to power through the content until its clear. If something is infact possible they'll beat the odds and clear it within a matter of days if not weeks. They already play the line between mathmatically undoable and just barely possible, so to tune it to be harder to last longer would just make it undoable, and they wouldn't be happy throwing their heads at something that cannot be done.

I made a thread a while back saying that for any player, world first or ultra casual, the only way to ensure that there's enough content for them to keep interested throughout is to build an infastructure that allows for player content. Not necessarily in terms of raids but even then there could probably be something said. 99% of it would be crap but 1% absolute and utter genius.

[Granyala]

Wouldn't the best players in the world also want content that lasts weeks or months, and provides new challenges during that time?

I seriously doubt it, because no human being can keep pulling these insane hours for months and stay sane / keep a healthy real life.

[jasdasm]

im happy i finally got away from raiding insane hours

[potis]

They dont care about the game the same way you do.

Its not a game, its a race, they win it, they are the best in the world despite you thinking its irrelevant.

Its their main hobby, their main target, the same way if you worked and played at some amateur football/basketball/insert sport here team around your city you would want to win the league.

Also they do other things in the other spare time, while waiting in between they clear it with alts for awhile, getting them ready for the next tier, they go more casual, others focus on other games and PvP while doing their daily life.

Just because they play a lot for a few days, while the average WoW player will be in the raid around 10 times the same amount of time to clear less simply because they are more productive.

Sure, they raided 10 hours a day.. Cleared 8/10 mythic then needed 30 hours in 3 days to clear the last 2 (Rough example).

Took them 40 hours to clear the whole instance in under a week, after that it will be 2-3 hours max to clear it after they get some gear etc etc etc.

You will probably be at 100 hours after 6 months, still wiping at some mythic boss assuming your guild even does that.

Should they care? no..Should you care ?No.

Just take your pace, the world first race just exists to exist, makes things for fun for a few days and the drama added is always fun.

[Aethilus]

Your guild is realistically the target audience of Blizzard's raid design. World first raiders are not. As was said above, they play optimally (very near), casual guilds do not. If world first raiders got what you're suggesting (one or two bosses per week), casual guilds and raiders would get one or two bosses every couple months, and that would be a game I would unsubscribe from.

[cFortyfive]

An encounter that would put a guild competing for a world first in that position would be impossible to beat for the rest unless they bring back an even bigger version of valor upgrades.

[Chult]

They wouldn't do it if they didn't like it. They play very long hours for a brief amount of time, and after everything is on farm, log in a few hours a week. The more average Hard Mode Raider is actually more prone to burn out, as they tend to Raid more hours over the period of any given tier than a top guild does. Top end guilds front load it, and then just chill for a few months.

[zaneosak]

Guilds like this enjoy the 1-2 week race and they spend the time preparing for that race while we are just playing at our own pace. So I would say that 1-2 weeks of total adrenaline is their "big moment" for each tier. And while they spend the rest of the tier gearing alts/funneling gear it is the same to them as us clearing 1-2 bosses a week. They might gear an alt or two every week and check them off the list as ready to go for tier 18. It's just different style and I am sure they are equally as satisfied.

[Deleted]

A guild currently ranking around 25-30 in the world has the following raid times:

First 1 week of progression from 14-03 every day.

Week 2: 17.00-01.00, extended during weekends(15.00-03.00).

Basicly they already raided more during this race than i do during an whole expansionen. They got thier monies worth.

[L3fty]

It's a rational enough idea - what gamer wouldn't want to remain engaged and compelled to achieve the final boss for a longer period? However, I think you have the answer already, these are not standard gamers. They are competitive, they push for ranking, they want to be amongst the best. This comes with the baggage of some very unhealthy raid schedules. I really don't think there would be enough players capable of raiding 5+ times a week for X months to sustain that raid model. Unless IRL you were a fitness fanatic I can only imagine the health implications would be pretty awful.

Not to mention, the only way they can make the game last longer for the top players seems to be on pure gear checks. If too many fights simply became mathematically impossible as opposed to learning curve difficulty, then I think the drive would be lost for the majority of top raiders.

A nice thought nevertheless.

[Gevoth]

Worrying about keeping world first racers entertained is folly. I think a much better argument could be made for completely ignoring what they do than any that put more development focus on them.

Is this concern more for those who play vicariously through world firsters and the duration of the entertainment they derive from the game without playing it? Because I'd say these are people to completely ignore not just what they do but what they have to say as well.

[IKT]

Worrying about keeping world first racers entertained is folly. I think a much better argument could be made for completely ignoring what they do than any that put more development focus on them.

In order to 'put more development focus' into something there has to be development focus to begin with.

MMO-Champ is run by Curse, Manaflask is run by a bunch of non-blizzard people, wowprogress again non-blizzard, what exactly do you think Blizzard has done to develop the world first race at all?

[Cheze]

Blizzard have said repeatedly that they aren't particularly concerned about world-first races; they aren't trying to design content that'll keep method et al fully engaged for months on end. It would probably be an impossible task, considering the rate those guilds chew through it.

As far as whether they're 'happy,' who cares? They presumably are, since they keep doing it. It's not as though there's that much money even in being the world first guild.

[Deleted]

Blizzard should make it unkillable for a few weeks, this guilds would never go this hours if the knew its impossible. And alot more Hardcore guilds that dont or cant raid insane hours could win. We could see who really is best not only who is willing to waste the most time.

Ofcourse you need to nerf the content after 4 weeks for the absolute casual guilds to be able to kill it in mythic. So everyone is happy.

[Tramzh]

They could make the tuning curve more steep, keeping the same difficulty on the last boss as it is now but make the earlier bosses more challenging. Currently multiple early mythic bosses gets killed within 10 tries.

[Deleted]

Tuning bosses for people that dedicate that life to raiding is not an option. These people raid 12 hours + each day. Tuning bosses for them would make the game to hard for most.

[Crushima]

I can't speak for anyone beyond myself, but I have been unhappy with the state of the game for a very long while, hence why I probably won't return after quitting due to various reasons. What you describe in the OP is part of it of course.

People who think content is not tunable to last much longer have not been playing a lot of difficult video games. There is plenty of ways to make encounters difficult, way beyond simple HPS/DPS numbers - these are the most easy tool to tune an encounter, that can make even unchallenging mechanics have to be optimized if tuned high enough. Generally speaking, it's in a MMO's game design to make the content trivial eventually (as you gear/level up) so this is also the adequate tool for WoW encounters (by reducing the optimization needed as your character power increases), hence why for the most part Mythic mechanics aren't really that challenging, and most of the challenge in Mythic comes from executing simple mechanics a lot more cleanly in order to optimize DPS.
But there are plenty of other ways to increase boss difficulty, and plenty of difficult video games out there, even for people spending their entire day playing it. The movement required on something like a double attenuation on pre-nerf Zor'lok is very little on the scale of video game standards, yet most encounters would be deemed nearly unkillable if phases like this kept happening regularly in WoW encounters.

Whether this approach would be fun in a multiplayer game is another question. I love that kind of shit in single player games, but I dunno how enjoyable it would be in a large scale raid. I'd love some small group content tuned around that tho.

Well we're talking about the world first guilds - Envy, the guild you played in, was never close to World First. So, if the game was so easy for you, why weren't you in a world first guild? I guess Method failed your trial or application.

Have fun playing silly little single player little anime girl games.

[Justwait]

I'm 95% sure most of our raiders are happy with how the tiers work out. We`re actually sad if it takes too long for a new tier to come out. Not with the length of current progression periods., more than 2 weeks and it'd likely be too long for us to enjoy it the same way we do right now.

[Nepinator]

Of course they are.

These are players who are able to fulfil multiple requirements to being in a world first guild.

First of all, you need to have the motivation, dedication and skill necessary for this kind of guild. This is something that comes from within, it's not like any of these world first players are being forced into it or dragged along. It's a conscious decision made by adults (or teens with a lot of freedom) and they know exactly what they're signing up for. They know these world first guilds are not friendly guilds. If you're not keeping up, you're gonna get cut. It's not a harsh feeling kind of decision, it's just what has to happen if it's a guild aiming for world firsts. Many amazing players may not make the cut to be in a guild like Method. It doesn't mean they're not amazing players, but they may have lacked something to keep them in the roster even if it's just keeping up on buying gear or even just not being an optimal class/spec, it could be anything that most regular guilds consider a non-issue.

You also have to have a certain amount of physical stamina. If you're raiding 16+ hours a day for what could be up to a fortnight, you need to make sure you're up to the job... eat right, sleep right. It will affect your real life. Many people have to book time off work specifically for when new raid tiers are launched. They're okay with that. They know that's necessary.

You also need to be okay with wiping. Lots. This isn't typical wiping though, every wipe has to result in someone learning something new and unlike us, world first guilds don't have the luxury of checking YouTube guides. They're learning fights from scratch. In this way, they will wipe more because they have no information to go on initially, whereas we can simply check guides and at least have a basic understanding of what the fight's about before we start pulling.

Is world first raiding for everyone? Absolutely not! It's definitely not for me, I'm a total scrub. But this is basically what I expect it to be like and I think only a handful of WoW players are cut out for it, whether it's because of skill or simply being able to spare the time and have the physical/mental stamina to raid nonstop for 16 hours (not including food breaks).

If they didn't enjoy the experience of racing for world first, they wouldn't do it. It's not like anybody is forced into being in a world first guild. They do it by choice. I hope they're happy, otherwise they're doing it very, very wrong!


Edit: Ha a Method player replies right before me.. or I didn't see it.. I guess my post stands though!