How do you get highskilled players and lowskilled players to work together?

[Deleted]

Is there a way to make this better? I would like to think that having the player base on some level interact and rely on each other would be a benefit but currently I can't really see a way to make it work...

Firstly, this is an excellent question and definitely needs to be addressed by the devs.

But, i would say that in Wow this is extremely difficult to achieve, especially with how the game is currently designed. In the early days of Wow 99% of the population was a noob, really we all were. So your question was moot. Alot of the fun was learning and hacking your way through the game... importantly, this was done alongside all the other players on your realm.

Now the game has next to zero player interaction out in the openworld and community doesnt exist outside of guilds. Consequently players have drifted further and further apart over Wows lifetime... all very sad really.

I think the only place in the game where players of all skill levels would play alongside each other was in the world pvp zones like Wintergrasp, Tol Barad and even Ashran. Wintergrasp was a great place to buddy up with players from the top guilds on your realm all tactically doing the tasks, and new players just rtunning round trying to work it all out. Loads of fun!!!

Sadly, this kind of content only works with distinct realms and thats been killed off with Xrealm tech

Outside of that i cannot think of any way for players of all abilities to work alongside each other.... such a shame.

[Baconeggcheese]

You create a game that teaches players how to play it at a rudimentary level so that you don't need 4 levels of difficulty because the skill gap is that large even when someone doesn't want to put in much if any effort.

There's also social systems you can put in to remedy such a thing, for instance FF14 announces that its someones first time in the dungeon when you go into a match made dungeon and gives the players additional rewards for having that person there. There's also a vote system at the end for who made the experience more positive.

WoW for reasons I do not understand haven't bothered to implement really any social systems that promote positive player behavior, and instead just leave players to their own devices and just continue to create systems that makes players less and less dependent on each other. Which only furthers the divide.

[Deleted]

It's the old Hen and Egg question.
You get the same thing with jobs, you need 3 years experience to get an entry level job.

So in WoW you need to have done heroic to raid heroic.

Aside most LFR players aren't to stupid to play higher difficulties, they merely don't want to put that much time into it.

You don't.
At least not with the current "do the content to death and then some more" system MMO players seem to think is "good game design".

Skilled players don't have the patience to suffer through multiple wipes due to gimping when content is already 9+ months old. They just want through there ASAP. So they choose to group up with other skilled players and leave the non skilled lot to fend for themselves (imho the only way they'll learn anyway).

There is barely anything more frustrating than doing everything right yourself but fail anyway becasue some movement-gimp doesn't understand the boss mechanic you got right the very first time. And now repeat that 17 times a raidnight.

[Snackpack]

start being decent people

[Granyala]

WoW for reasons I do not understand haven't bothered to implement really any social systems that promote positive player behavior, and instead just leave players to their own devices and just continue to create systems that makes players less and less dependent on each other. Which only furthers the divide.

Add to that, that any player with skill&time who has access to HC/Myth level raiding will outperform a non raiding character by a factor of 2-3 due to gear alone. Skill hardly factors into the equation at that point, the raider will keep grouping with other raiders in order to make use of the exponential power curve and obliterate "chore" content like M dungeons instead of taking the time to "drag" a low geared non raider through.

[Ichifails]

Aside most LFR players aren't to stupid to play higher difficulties, they merely don't want to put that much time into it.

Oh seriously go fuck yourself with this nonsense. Does anyone really think this is in any way accurate?

A good player needs 3-4 hours per week to clear Mythic and that's pretty much the case for every tier after week 2 or 3. An LFR player will ALWAYS spend more time on the fucking game than a decent Mythic player.
If LFR player weren't stupid, they would find a guild that fits their free time to raid with because... shocker... they would be a good player everyone wants in their guild.


This is why good players don't want to play with bad players, bad players always have a fucking excuse for being beyond terrible and it's never because of themselves.

[Deleted]

Well it is simple really. But the solution would be not very welcome.
"Remove all difficulty modes" - go back to the TBC style of raids.

Back then low and highskilled worked more together.

I dont think this will make much difference simply because all of the skilled players will tackle the content from behind guilds. So they still have no reason to mix with the new/unskilled players at all.

[ceall]

A thought has been slowly building in my head as I read through the forums and play the alpha that I myself haven't been able to find a answer to.

How in a mmo do you get players who want to push the limit of their characters to work together or even intermingle with those that don't without it being a negative experience for either party?

We all know the wow community can and often is extremely divided with most players only interacting outside of guild in match made groups such as lfr or lfd. Where currently they don't truly need to rely on one another to succeed. Sure you need people to at least be awake on the other side of the key board but that is about it. The problem seems to come when lower skilled players try to break into harder modes of content be it raiding or pvp.

The issue seems to be that any content that is designed to be a training ground (normal raids, challenge modes,and mythic dungeons I would argue for WoD) are burned though rather quickly by players and it creates a odd situation where experienced players form groups to farm them quickly while inexperienced struggle quite a bit just to take the first few steps on the progression ladder.

Is there a way to make this better? I would like to think that having the player base on some level interact and rely on each other would be a benefit but currently I can't really see a way to make it work...

I think it's a player thing, not a community thing. If a player wants to get better, he has to start low (low end normal guild barely clearing the content on normal). If you push ahead of everyone, doing much better than the rest of your team, it's time to move a step up and leaving your guild while finding a guild that's around your performance. You may not be really experienced by then, but there's always groups (most likely during their forming process) to give inexperienced people a shot. Maybe this guild will take a few steps into mythic. Then you have experience and it'll be kind of easy to get a good group.

That was my way in becoming a mythic raider. Took me from ICC to firelands until I cleared my first raid in the highest difficulty. Since then I'm pretty fine in the world 1000 (+-300) bracket, which could be even better, if I had more time IRL.


But you can't get highskilled and lowskilled players to play together, if it's not guild-internal service or lfd/lfr. Maybe a mentoring program would work. Everyone with heroic clear (as normal is too easy) would be eligible to become a mentor. If a player of your class reaches lvl 10 and chooses the spec, you have as "first spec", one of those possible mentors will be asked randomly, if they want to become the mentor of that new player. Now if the new player asks his mentor where the entrance to Deadmines is for example, and the mentor tells him or even leads him there personally, he gets mentor points. When the new player gets max lvl, the mentor will also get mentor points.
Now at max lvl the mentor can run dungeons with his trainee, which will award mentor points to. Once the trainee kills his first raid boss on normal or higher difficulty, the mentor gains a last ton of mentor points, if mentor and trainee kill the boss together, that amount is doubled. The mentorship will then be finished and mentor and trainee may have become good friends until then.
Mentor points may be spent on cosmetics, mounts, heirlooms and maybe even elixirs of rapid mind or a special mentor transmog set.

New characters may also decline any mentorship (if new chars are just some alt of an experienced player).
If new players join the game with a level boost (e.G. Legion boost), they may also join the mentor program as a trainee.

Another, less personal way to accomplish the goal you're describing is to give the highskilled player appealing rewards for stepping down and "being forced" to play with "noobs".

[Deleted]

Oh seriously go fuck yourself with this nonsense. Does anyone really think this is in any way accurate?

A good player needs 3-4 hours per week to clear Mythic and that's pretty much the case for every tier after week 2 or 3. An LFR player will ALWAYS spend more time on the fucking game than a decent Mythic player.
If LFR player weren't stupid, they would find a guild that fits their free time to raid with because... shocker... they would be a good player everyone wants in their guild.


This is why good players don't want to play with bad players, bad players always have a fucking excuse for being beyond terrible and it's never because of themselves.

I'll just find a guild that fits my time schedule and needs yet ANOTHER tank, k, thank you, you changed my live.

[Granyala]

A good player needs 3-4 hours per week to clear Mythic and that's pretty much the case for every tier after week 2 or 3.

Rofl... what bullshit is this, I don't even.

[Baconeggcheese]

Add to that, that any player with skill&time who has access to HC/Myth level raiding will outperform a non raiding character by a factor of 2-3 due to gear alone. Skill hardly factors into the equation at that point, the raider will keep grouping with other raiders in order to make use of the exponential power curve and obliterate "chore" content like M dungeons instead of taking the time to "drag" a low geared non raider through.

Agreed, but the skill gap causes the gear gap.

I cleared the first half of mythic HFC with somehwere between a 705 ilvl up to a 710 ilvl by the time we got to gorefiend. Cleared the 2nd half of the instance at around an average of 715ish, and we only got our legendary ring by the time we reached archimonde and it wasn't upgraded since we just got it in time to use it on progression for that one boss.

"most" people don't bring that level of performance, which is why lower difficulties exist. The only real difference between normal and heroic atm is tuning, which means the player performance gap on the character level was large enough that they needed to make a difficulty that required less throughput from people while still maintaining the mechanics.

[Deleted]

Rofl... what bullshit is this, I don't even.

I guess hes talking about the overall time including filling replacements as playuers leave etc.

Cos yeah im doing each mythic at between 7-10mins per dungeon atm.

[Baconeggcheese]

Rofl... what bullshit is this, I don't even.

He was a bit abrasive in what he said but I don't really get why you think its weird.

My guild clears mythic in around 3 hours every tuesday while carrying buyers and then most of us don't log in again until next tuesday. We've been doing this for months.

It didn't start a week or two after farm as it still took a full raid and a couple hours (probably 5-7 hours total) when we started farm back in august, but once we got geared up and streamlined some things it shaved down a lot of time, as well as the ring and gear upgrades shaving even more time off.

[This Sesshomaru]

The problem with this is that if you give a benefit to the highskilled player to motivate him to play with a lowskilled one, 99% will start to complain because they will feel "forced" to do it to get the benefit.. The best example was the valor gained from doing LFR

Its a very tricky subject

[Granyala]

He was a bit abrasive in what he said but I don't really get why you think its weird.

Because to get Mythic clear after ID 3 you need front loaded progression incl split runs, the whole shabang.
Kinda defeats the "casuals spend more time in raids!" a bit.

Also: only the Elite gets content clear that quickly.
There are WORLDS of shades of grey between Elite (white) and "LFR-Faceroll-bad-doesn't want to learn" (black).
To label everyone that doesn't clear Mythic after 3 IDs as "bad players" is idiotic.

- - - Updated - - -

Cos yeah im doing each mythic at between 7-10mins per dungeon atm.

1) He was talking about mythic RAIDS. (He mentioned Tier)
2) You don't clear M Dungeons in 7 minutes because you are "good". You clear them that fast because you overgear content that was designed to be (barely) doable in item level 660 by wearing ilvl 736.
That is a delta of 76 item levels!

[Baconeggcheese]

Because to get Mythic clear after ID 3 you need front loaded progression incl split runs, the whole shabang.
Kinda defeats the "casuals spend more time in raids!" a bit.

I took it more as him meaning after 2-3 farm clears, but maybe I'm just auto-correcting his post for what seems like obvious things and he did mean 2-3 clears total.

Typically a guild like mine does raid far less than a "casual" guild though, we front load a bit like you say and then don't raid much at all for the rest. So unless a guild raids less than 3 hours a week (which some do, I was in one of those once upon a time) they probably end up raiding more than us.

Also: only the Elite gets content clear that quickly.
There are WORLDS of shades of grey between Elite (white) and "LFR-Faceroll-bad-doesn't want to learn" (black).
To label everyone that doesn't clear Mythic after 3 IDs as "bad players" is idiotic.

Agreed, people are fast and loose about sweeping generalizations as per usual. I try to gloss over the hyperbole and focus more on the point people are trying to make when I can.

[Numero]

Overall, people will just gravitate to players who prefer the same play style that they do. It would help if the community was better/less jaded, but that happens when a game is so old and you have people who have been playing it for so long they aren't doing it for "fun," it is more like a job than a hobby.

In a perfect world, some of these "higher skilled" players would be happy to make use of their skill/experience to lead raids (guild, pug, whatever) and help out/teach the lesser skilled players.

I suppose it used to be this way, but like I said, the game has been around for so long and players are so jaded and worn out that a lot of the experienced players can't be bothered to teach and just assume the worst (the low skilled/new players don't give a crap that they suck and won't listen to me anyway, so why bother helping them?) and the new players also assume the worst (elitist crap-bag over there is some jerk who wants to remove LFR and keeps telling me I suck and to L2P noob!!!).

It's just so easy to be a douche on the internet, and even stylish, especially in the gaming community. Not trying to be all "rainbows and sunshine" but it doesn't HAVE to be that way, but it is hard to create a positive atmosphere in a game where there are so few consequences for being a jerk-off and Blizzard has removed so much of the dependence that you used to have to work with other players to do stuff. /shrug

[Sansnom]

Oh seriously go fuck yourself with this nonsense. Does anyone really think this is in any way accurate?

Yes, it is true. You not believing it is another matter.

A good player needs 3-4 hours per week to clear Mythic and that's pretty much the case for every tier after week 2 or 3. An LFR player will ALWAYS spend more time on the fucking game than a decent Mythic player.
If LFR player weren't stupid, they would find a guild that fits their free time to raid with because... shocker... they would be a good player everyone wants in their guild.


This is why good players don't want to play with bad players, bad players always have a fucking excuse for being beyond terrible and it's never because of themselves.

Your post is good evidence for this thread.

[Granyala]

Typically a guild like mine does raid far less than a "casual" guild though, we front load a bit like you say and then don't raid much at all for the rest. So unless a guild raids less than 3 hours a week (which some do, I was in one of those once upon a time) they probably end up raiding more than us.

I won't argue with that, because I know it's true.
While the front loading is probably extremely intense and exhausting, the following 5-10+ months (depending on Tier length) put the regular 9hrs/week+ "casual" guilds at a serious disadvantage in terms of time investment. Esp in the year long patches.

I mean are dudes like you even raiding anymore or are you off to the broken isles, sipping margharitas waiting for the Legion to arrive?
My guild is still obediently progressing M Xul. Gotta hand it to them, that is some stamina right there. Makes me glad that I quit raiding.

[Lord Havik]

How in a mmo do you get players who want to push the limit of their characters to work together or even intermingle with those that don't without it being a negative experience for either party?

You don't.

The two groups are incompatible, intolerant of one another, (for good reason on the part of skilled v nonskilled) have vastly different levels of dedication, and prefer vastly different styles and levels of gameplay.

The person who clears Mythic HFC in a night and got their cutting edge achievement before the nerfs is not going to ever get along with the person who wants to drool on their keyboard and contribute nothing in LFR because 'yoloit'sjustagamebrotrolololololol'. Especially not in content that matters to either party.

Right now, the current system of different difficulties separating players into skill groups is the most efficient means of making most parties "happy"™.