20 Man Mythic: Success or Failure?

[Raiju]

It only killed guilds that were incapable of expanding or refused to merge with others. The issue is too many guilds thought they were special and were unwilling to disband and join with another guild. Common sense that there should have been fewer guilds when the hardest content went to strictly 20 man format.

Merges rarely work because guilds have different atmospheres/communities and not all are compatible.

[Relapses]

Actually it's a problem of the legion legendaries in this case, which they are holding by as a core implementation

There's no way to know whether the Artifact Weapon system will turn out to be as unfair as the Legendary ring. It's at the very least a better way of handling things since the nature of the ring quite unfairly benefited classes with high windows initial burst damage (cough Arcane Mage cough).

[Gorgodeus]

Merges rarely work because guilds have different atmospheres/communities and not all are compatible.

That is nothing more than the typical excuse given by guilds unwilling to move forward, and would rather complain that "20 man mythic killed my guild".

[Deja Thoris]

It's a good idea but it solves one issue and brings about more problems than the ones it solves.

It's a question of how you "rate" the solution versus the problems is causes.

Allowing people that can't field a "full" 20 man team to raid is a massive plus. Some guilds that are World 700 getting rank 2 on the server instead of rank 1 because they played the flex metagame better is minor (in my eyes)

Others will disagree and thats fine because its an opinion.

[Kolvarg]

My solution has been and is still:
- Keep Mythic locked with no cross-realm and 20-man for the first few months of the raid so it continues relevant and tight tuned for the top end raiders;
- Open Mythic for cross-realm and flex (10-30 or 15-25 or something if they still want to be a bit more strict) after that so the more casual/less serious raiders and friends&family groups can still pursue at least some Mythic kills.

Not optimal, but best of both worls for both kinds of raiders imho.

[Jaylock]

Down to brass tacks: it was a logistical failure, it was predicted to be and always will be. Its not that it isn't nice to have something to aspire to; it's just another damn difficulty level with an excuse to create exclusive content for those few able to dedicate themselves to it.

This isn't 1999-2002 anymore, Blizzard. I get that some of you (namely Afrasabiassaholi) lead and want to be that hardened schlong in the faces of eager-to-suck nerds, but EQ's popularity based on that alone topped at about 150k active subs. Games are not meant to be jobs to most people.

You see, this type of attitude reeks of jealousy, greed, entitlement, and quite frankly is why the game has suffered so much in terms of sub losses.

Games now days have difficulty levels. There's no getting around that. Heroic Flex raiding as it is now is quite the challenge for most people who have any inkling of a desire to raid. Why are you shitting on a mode of raiding that is intentionally very hard (aka mythic raiding)? Why does the game and the raid size have to be catered to your (and everyone else whining about mythic raiding) whim? It is DESIGNED to be a difficult task to overcome the obstacles, and part of that is creating an environment where it is required to have some sort of logistic thought or hurdle to overcome. Thats all part of the idea of the highest / hardest end raid content is only for those who can overcome both the social / logistics side of things, as well as the actual encounter difficulty of things. It takes top performers, and the content is there. You are just unwilling to do what it takes to get there, and thats okay. You have 3 other difficulty modes available to you.

I was willing to do what it took to get into a mythic guild and progress in mythic difficulty. It wasnt a walk in the park to get there, but I did it because guess what... I WANTED it. Plain and simple. Nothing was holding me back other than myself and what I was willing to do to get to that level.

Dont give me this bullshit of "whaaa whaaa whaaa exclusive content only for the elite!" Fucking damn right its exclusive for the elite, for those who DESIRE and WANT to be there. Mythic raiding weeds out the riffraff from the true dedicated players of the game. There are some good riffraff players out there, but if they arent raiding Mythic, then they aren't willing to do what it takes to get there. Plain and simple.

[Osmeric]

It only killed guilds that were incapable of expanding or refused to merge with others. The issue is too many guilds thought they were special and were unwilling to disband and join with another guild. Common sense that there should have been fewer guilds when the hardest content went to strictly 20 man format.

"The design was fine; it was the customers who were defective. "

This is the philosophy of successful product design, right?

[Baconeggcheese]

That is nothing more than the typical excuse given by guilds unwilling to move forward, and would rather complain that "20 man mythic killed my guild".

I'm kinda stunned by you genuinely thinking this way, its as if you've never managed a guild before or have any concept of what social structures are like.

and I say this as someone in a guild transitioned through this change without a hitch.

[Deleted]

Two major problems with the idea of flex Mythic being balanced after the World 1st race is over:

1.) The encounters would have to be designed with the idea of flexible mechanics from the beginning, meaning even if the first iteration is done at 20M, the mechanics would still have to be designed in a way that at some point players are going to complete it with different raid sizes.

2.) Even after the World First 1st race is over, there's still competition between guilds on the realms they play. If it becomes easier to progress on bosses with odd raid sizes, you better believe players are going to use whichever size is perceived easiest for progression.

It's a good idea but it solves one issue and brings about more problems than the ones it solves.

It is relatively easy to make sure 20 man is the easiest. This does not mean easy in general, just easy in comparison to 10-19 or 21-30.
For the second bit, the guilds that would go to different raid sizes just cause it would be easier (which im saying wouldnt happen anyway if done correctly) are the guilds who already have many people on standby and clearly dont care about sitting few people out just to get a perfect raid comp. This is far less of a problem from my experience than the fact that people don't want to play when they arent guaranteed to have a raid going.

You can't count on everyone being there always and you cant count on someone not being there sometimes (apart from world 1st racers). This means for me at least, that i've had to make a raid group with these facts in mind. I have to have a raid group where people who reserve their time to play don't always get to play. This is far more horrible for me when we happen to kill a boss after a long struggle and we have people who couldnt join. Having flex would be a blessing, i could have a 30 man group where everyone who wanted would get to raid every night. I could count on having at least 10 and not over 30 (or even 20 if you'd make flex 11-20, which would make balancing even easier).

Progressing on heroic was this expansion for me such a great experience which makes the experience going into mythic look like shite for me.

[Bookofblade]

There's no way to know whether the Artifact Weapon system will turn out to be as unfair as the Legendary ring. It's at the very least a better way of handling things since the nature of the ring quite unfairly benefited classes with high windows initial burst damage (cough Arcane Mage cough).

he isnt talking about the weapons hes speaking on the random world legendaries

[GiefEpixe]

I'd say by and large players dislike logistics being a part of the raiding experience so 10M being more popular because of this isn't surprising. But I don't think players by and large prefer smaller raid sizes just because they are more intimate.

Logistics are constantly being pointed out as the main reason for people preferring the smaller raid size when offered a choice. I don't see why.

The logistic aspect is only affecting leaders and officers of a raid. Most of them time, 80-90% of the people aren't involved in any organisational tasks whatsoever.

How can that be the paramount reason for players preferring the "option of less resistance" then? If I'm just a raid member, I'm showing up at the respective starting time and that's it—whether I'm raiding with 24 or 9 others doesn't really matter unless there are fundamental organisational problems.

[Deleted]

For the small guilds like mine it has been a failure. Being just 10 man to raid having to get another 10 to see mythic is a pain in the ass. That's why I didn't raid mythic.

Exactly this. We too are a small guild, usually 15-16 signs for any given raid. Recruiting was near impossible, because the realm we are on is incredibly dead. As time progressed, more and more people canceling their subs, the more the realm died. Sure we could move, but not everyone wants to, we'd lose members and being a tight group, we'd lose friends.

Mythic, like any other difficulty, should be flexible. That's my opinion.

[Deleted]

Logistics are constantly being pointed out as the main reason for people preferring the smaller raid size when offered a choice. I don't see why.

The logistic aspect is only affecting leaders and officers of a raid. Most of them time, 80-90% of the people aren't involved in any organisational tasks whatsoever.

Logistics affect everyone. Logistics affect people who don't want to be on standby and have to be. I pointed out earlier that this can snowball on some individuals to not show up more often. This means more recruiting and more people. Failure on the logistical part means also that there are nights of less than 20 people which affects everyone who show up. As the playerbase of wow becomes older people do value their time more and more. Unreliability on being able to raid is becoming a factor for many players.

[Raiju]

There's no way to know whether the Artifact Weapon system will turn out to be as unfair as the Legendary ring. It's at the very least a better way of handling things since the nature of the ring quite unfairly benefited classes with high windows initial burst damage (cough Arcane Mage cough).

No, the legion legendaries. Exactly I've said - the RNG legendaries you can obtain from the start of the expansion, and will later be usable in mythic after the race is over.

[Vestig3]

first of all, lol jaylock thread, second lol mythic focus thread and third i feel 20 man is the perfect group size, ive always found 25 man to be awkward and if you look at it from pure from progression pov its a huge succes.

[Deleted]

Huge success!

[Relapses]

Logistics are constantly being pointed out as the main reason for people preferring the smaller raid size when offered a choice. I don't see why.

The logistic aspect is only affecting leaders and officers of a raid. Most of them time, 80-90% of the people aren't involved in any organisational tasks whatsoever.

How can that be the paramount reason for players preferring the "option of less resistance" then? If I'm just a raid member, I'm showing up at the respective starting time and that's it—whether I'm raiding with 24 or 9 others doesn't really matter unless there are fundamental organisational problems.

The problem is that the breakpoint for getting into a 10M raid is so much less than that of a larger raid. Even if the organisational tasks are only managed by a few players, it's still going to be a lot easier to get together the requisite number of players necessary to raid in the smaller version. As a result, there were always far more options for players to join 10M raids than there were 25Ms. Why bother trying to raid in a version of the instance where the likelihood of logistic failure affecting your progress was much higher?

If you give players an option to raid smaller, they always will take that option. The point of contention I have is that larger raids seemingly worked all the way up to T11 whereby gear parity between 10 and 25M gutted the latter. Players who prefer smaller raid sizes because of their preference of intimacy in the raid group then use this data to say that "clearly players enjoyed 10M more," where I simply ask with a bit of pragmatism if that's the whole story.

[Deleted]

For the small guilds like mine it has been a failure. Being just 10 man to raid having to get another 10 to see mythic is a pain in the ass. That's why I didn't raid mythic.

Why do you need to do mythic if you only have 10-14 people in guild ? It is not needed or something. And if you need to progress mythic maybe.. try to get more people into guild ?

[Relapses]

No, the legion legendaries. Exactly I've said - the RNG legendaries you can obtain from the start of the expansion, and will later be usable in mythic after the race is over.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I still don't believe the Legion legendaries will have the same negative impact as the ring. Some of them are definitely overpowered but in HFC most raiders have their legendary ring while in Legion only a very few people may have the legendary items. It's not exactly the same and it still doesn't excuse the likelihood of huge variances in raidsize difficulty scaling in the idea of flexible Mythic. I can't imagine Blizzard ever implementing an idea like this since it just opens up an even bigger can of worms than the one thing it solves.

[Bookofblade]

Why do you need to do mythic if you only have 10-14 people in guild ? It is not needed or something. And if you need to progress mythic maybe.. try to get more people into guild ?

because Mythic is the only thing that offers any real challenge?