Proposition: remove one tier of raid difficulty

[therealbowser]

With such a wide range of difficulties, it'll be near impossible for them to ever make Dungeons a compelling source of gear or content. Raids, even LFR, are generally more epic and rewarding than Dungeons, so the majority of the playerbase will opt to run them.

Mythic dungeons says hi.

Challenge modes on the other hand were never about the loot, but rather the challenge and unique rewards for participating.

[Kaneiac]

You go in on HC and then do the same crap in Mythic b/c the raid lead flipped the switch to "stuff is now hard!".
Meh. Never liked that concept, but Mythic is too hard to go into it right away, at least for the non worldfirst crowd.

This is the problem for us, a semi-casual raiding guild.

We have about 12 people. We got 10/10H about 3 weeks ago. With the exception of WF/Socketed stuff and maybe 1 odd piece here or there, we're basically BiS and there's already been a sharp drop off of enthusiasm.

I'm not bringing up "BRING MYTHIC TO FLEX/10 MAN!" but I do wish there was an easy solution to this.

[Glorious Leader]

With such a wide range of difficulties, it'll be near impossible for them to ever make Dungeons a compelling source of gear or content. Raids, even LFR, are generally more epic and rewarding than Dungeons, so the majority of the playerbase will opt to run them.

Watch this. Ima do a magic trick hopefully the developers are paying attention as well.

Dungeons reward apexis.
Apexis vendors now have heroic level tier pieces and trinkets and weapons.

I just made dungeons a compelling source of both gear and content. The reality is in fact the opposite of what you stated. Given even remotely similar awards people will opt out of raiding at all costs. This is the reason lfr exists and why every other piece of content has been neutered of significant reward.

[Jensxo]

Remove mythic? I'd be behind that!

I don't see why people have such a big issue with difficult content?

Do you really want a game where the content is so basic and has such little difficulty? The game wouldn't be compelling at all..

It's just odd to think that the vast majority of the playerbase are actually not very good at the game....it's not meant as an insult but as a fact...
The vast majority of the playerbase don't see the highest difficulty content...and i just have never understood why that's the case. Like what is physically stopping you from seeing the content?

It's like saying - let's remove PRO NFL but lets continue to watch the amateur leagues?

Games sort've attract their audience because their difficult.....who here can honestly say they like playing a game that's easy?
Have you ever noticed when you used to use cheat codes back in those old xbox games or old PC games - the game got really boring really quickly? Because you sort've gamed the system and it made the game much easier...

Like i get people have fun in different ways in this game but what is truly fun about a game where you just win everything? Like surely you want to be tested in a game isn't that what the game creators make games for?

Just a weird thing that popped in my head.

If Mythic raiding makes up like 1% of the playerbase - and blizzard just lost 25% of their playerbase? Doesn't that mean that most of the subs lost from blizzard were the casual players - not the hardcore players? Considering that there are no where near 2.9 million hardcore players? Doesn't that say something?

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Let's get rid of Mythic, a difficulty hardly anyone does compared to the other difficulties.

[lunchbox2042]

Remove mythic? I'd be behind that!

I can raise a glass to that. Let all the hardcore raiders go play something else since they're only 5% of the player base.

[Jensxo]

I can raise a glass to that. Let all the hardcore raiders go play something else since they're only 5% of the player base.

Its funny you say that - unfortunately any difficult MMO will eventually become catered to casuals inevitably. Which sucks.

I mean - the day where WoW becomes playable for a 12 year old kid who can do anything in the game at all without any effort is the day WoW will cease to exist. If you TRULY believe that this game shouldn't have difficult content then your brain is warped.

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I can raise a glass to that. Let all the hardcore raiders go play something else since they're only 5% of the player base.

Let's remove the english premier league - considering only 1% of the entire people in the world that play soccer end up getting into those teams....let's remove that and watch idiots who don't know how to kick a soccer ball...we'll see how long that lasts.

[aGit]

people get all worked up due to lack of content, and now you want to remove it even more?

the argument that all the different difficulties will burn a player out is totally ludicrous. you don't keep on clearing the content after you've decked yourself in epics from it.

[Jensxo]

people get all worked up due to lack of content, and now you want to remove it even more?

the argument that all the different difficulties will burn a player out is totally ludicrous. you don't keep on clearing the content after you've decked yourself in epics from it.

So let's say you have someone who raids LFR and they clear the content in the first week it comes out - they quit
Then you have someone who raids mythic who spends months trying to clear the content - a group of 20 mythic raiders probably provide more sub money of 20 casual raiders as they tend to not stay onto the game after a month or so? Whereas mythic raiders stay on the game the whole year around?

[theostrichsays]

Should only be 2 difficulties, LFR and Heroic. LFR should be between current LFR difficulty and normal difficulty, Heroic should be between current Heroic and Mythic in difficulty. Both should drop the same gear(varied Ilvls of couse). LFR should be queue-able and Heroic should be server only. Heroics would also offer titles, mounts, achievements.

The only real change I would personally say to this:
Put Ulduar like hard modes into "end wing" bosses. Ten boss raid, 2 end wing bosses, and final boss, each having an optional means to make them harder (significantly harder, mechanic wise + number wise that is not easily outgearable).

[Abysal]

So let's say you have someone who raids LFR and they clear the content in the first week it comes out - they quit
Then you have someone who raids mythic who spends months trying to clear the content - a group of 20 mythic raiders probably provide more sub money of 20 casual raiders as they tend to not stay onto the game after a month or so? Whereas mythic raiders stay on the game the whole year around?

Sure, but for that group of 20 mythic raiders you probably have 2000 casual raiders not 20 so your example isn't really relevant.

[Glorious Leader]

Its funny you say that - unfortunately any difficult MMO will eventually become catered to casuals inevitably. Which sucks.

I mean - the day where WoW becomes playable for a 12 year old kid who can do anything in the game at all without any effort is the day WoW will cease to exist. If you TRULY believe that this game shouldn't have difficult content then your brain is warped.

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Let's remove the english premier league - considering only 1% of the entire people in the world that play soccer end up getting into those teams....let's remove that and watch idiots who don't know how to kick a soccer ball...we'll see how long that lasts.

People give a shit about premier League. Alot of folks do.


Nobody gives a fuck about mythic raiders. Sorry you aren't that important. You aren't juvi or Man U.

[clevin]

I agree with OP that we don't need both intermediate difficulties... but the solution isn't to remove both. It's to combine them. Make heroic an option on any boss, triggerable by some mechanism as we did in Ulduar and ICC. As you progress, if you get to a boss that you easily farm, turn on heroic mode for that fight. Have a roadblock boss? Set it to normal. Kill a boss on a difficulty and that boss is locked for the week for everyone in the raid.

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People give a shit about premier League. Alot of folks do.


Nobody gives a fuck about mythic raiders. Sorry you aren't that important. You aren't juvi or Man U.

Oh grow up. The existence of mythic doesn't harm you in the least. The whiny asshats who complain about Mythic on one side and LFR on the other all need to get over themselves.

[corebit]

I think either Normal orHeroic mode could be removed since there is nothing that differentiates them except boss health/damage. Mechanical-wise they're identical.

LFR is absolutely needed because it caters to people who just don't want to deal with the hassles of organized raiding.
Mythic is absolutely needed to provide the hardcore challenge.
Either Normal or Heroic can be merged into a single Flex difficulty.

But 3-difficulties is the absolute minimum that I think the game should have.

[Deleted]

You need LFR for the casual experience. Then you need Normal for the organized raiding experience.
The rest can easily be removed, since only tiny fraction of players run Mythic/Heroic.
Tune everything to "Aoe-easy" like it was in Wrath, and people will return.

Putting design efforts and resources to where the majority of customers are would make perfect sense. At the moment they're catering super hard to tiny minority group running Mythics and Heroics.

[Sussex]

I lost all motivation to PvE when there became different difficulty settings. When they first introduced 10m copy-paste 25m raids (in WOTLK) that was the first blow to my motivation. The specific heroic modes like 3 drakes or Ulduar was fine, but then they went full retard with having normal/heroic modes in every raid after that my motivation to raid just died.

The game was at it's most enjoyable for me personally in Vanilla and TBC when there was only 1 mode for raiding, not 2 or 3 or 9 different modes/settings.

[Dezminion]

I would like to see Mythic go away and Heroic also.
Lets just have Vanilla style, cater raiding to 2% of the playerbase, that would be so awsumcake....

[1mmersi0n]

Remove mythic and give the lfr scrubs their tier gear back.

[LilSaihah]

If I was going to remove anything, I'd probably remove LFR and LFD. Replace them with single-player modes of those dungeons so the "but the story" concern's addressed (better than it already is, even).

Mind, Blizzard would have to relabel the game from an MMORPG to an RPG with multiplayer features like co-op and persistent markets.

[mysticx]

I wish they'd remove LFR and normal. I feel no motivation to go for the higher difficulties now that I've plowed through the raids on easy mode.

I have an even better idea: ditch the higher difficulties so that when you're done with LFR and normal you don't have to do things in "Hard mode" any more, added bonus: you're not removing access to raid content from less skilled/fanatical players that way.

Note that this idea is pretty stupid, but still, it's slightly less stupid than saying "I don't want to do raids in 4 difficulties, so let's lock 90% of players out of raids altogether rather than fight the Self-control boss!"