I have a suggestion to make raiding viable and fun for everyone!

[GwiGwi]

I would be fine with a return to normal/heroic raiding, but personally I think the 20man set number of Mythic works better.. Blizzard fail miserably at balancing the flex mode as it is, and so it's much more difficult with smaller groups, and in the past the balancing was also similarly poor with 10/25hc. So i'd prefer they kept flex + 20mythic as it is.. I don't care about LFR but a lot of super casuals and anti-socials play it, it's probably too ingrained for removing it to have a positive effect for the overall playerbase.

Though 4 difficulties as it is now is overkill, they could drop normal mode as it exists now.



Why would activated hardmodes not work, you have said they won't work and haven't given a reason.. It would not be hard for them to do.

3 Drakes = Don't kill mini bosses
Freya = Don't kill mini bosses
Mimiron = DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!
Yogg Saron = No buffs/help from Titan Keepers
Flame Leviathon = Extra defense system, don't kill towers.
Deconstructor = Dps race to kill heart activates hard mode.
Vezax = Don't take the gas orbs, so the miniboss spawns.

They are all fairly simple to implement and worked amazingly well, there is no reason at all why that could not work today.. Unless you have a good reason?

They already have this system in place, it's called achievements.

[InstantPoM]

The reason is simple: At ulduar anything was new. So the activates where new and shiny. After 10 raids they would be boring as hell. Nearly every active in ulduar can be crushed down into 3 or 4 categories. After 10 instances it wouldn't be fun anymore. A switch is ust plain simple clear and better. Everything is set to what it is and what the raid wants.

So instead of going with something versatile because it might get boring, you suggest going with something that is inherently boring from the start? Not to mention it would give an in-game solution, rather than just a menu, which is about the most uncreative it can get.

And so what if there's a few type of mechanics to trigger hard mode that are used most of the time? Even then it would still be more original than just flipping a switch in a drop-down menu. And would Blizzard really not be able to come up with even one original, encounter-specific idea per tier (like the Mimiron switch in Ulduar)?

[Wilderness]

So instead of going with something versatile because it might get boring, you suggest going with something that is inherently boring from the start? Not to mention it would give an in-game solution, rather than just a menu, which is about the most uncreative it can get.

And so what if there's a few type of mechanics to trigger hard mode that are used most of the time? Even then it would still be more original than just flipping a switch in a drop-down menu. And would Blizzard really not be able to come up with even one original, encounter-specific idea per tier (like the Mimiron switch in Ulduar)?

You say that flipping a switch from a drop-down menu is boring and then talk about literally pushing a button in-game being an original idea? That's rather contradictory.

There was nothing interesting about activating the Ulduar hard-modes. Don't kill trash. DPS harder. Change boss kill order. DPS harder. DPS faster. Don't kill trash. Push a button. Don't kill that add. Don’t talk to NPCs. The only one that you actually activate during the boss fight by doing something differently is not killing the add on Vezax. The rest are functionally no different than flipping a switch, except you get to kill less trash I guess.

They were clearly trying this method of hard mode activations since it is throughout the instance, but they couldn’t manage a single interesting one. And you think that when we’re on the 8th raid tier with hard modes like that they’d be able to come up with anything good? There just isn’t that much you can do in combat to change things and you can bet that after a couple tiers of that people would be bitching about how similar all the hard mode activations are.

Implementing one of these things every now and then is fun – like the protectors and their kill order/gear in Terrace. Its nice to have a couple options from time to time, and to be rewarded for pursuing the harder one. But it didn't work out as anything better than an in-game switch the 1 tier they tried to do it, and it wouldn't have worked beyond that any better.

[Leih]

Why are 4-5 difficulty modes acceptable in FPS games (like Doom)...in strategy games....in RPGs like Diablo...but cause this freaking butthurt in MMOs?

I think the main issue is that people don't like that it's kind of intended for you to begin with the easiest one and work your way up through each difficulty one at a time, while you progressively gear up to beat the next difficulty up. Normally in a single player game you pick your difficulty in the beginning and go through it. I think vast majority of players don't play a game through again on the next difficulty up immediately after.

But I don't know how things could be changed to only do one raid difficulty and do the one that's appropriate enough so that it lasts you around the correct amount of time... not without breaking how the game works right now.

[Elhaym]

The entire game would be better off if they stopped wasting development time tuning mythic difficulty bosses that will be killed by only a few thousand people.