Ion: It's the Myhic guild leaders fault for burnout

[Geckoo]

Actually she's right. Organized raiding has always been a minority thing, and continues to do so. Wowprogress lists ~20.000 guilds that have killed Skorpyron hc. Even if we are generous and assume 30 players in every raid, that's still a small minority. Nonheroic kills would have to be a lot higher to disprove that claim.

Right now is a minority thing, i agree, in fact, i think it's a dying minority. But it was not like that in the past, as i said, high-end raiding has always been the minority. Although it's hard to consider if 600.000 or even 200.000 is a minority when we don't know how many active players the game has.

But i guess i should make the difference clear... in my eyes even the small social guild that did raid and barely completed Karazhan during TBC was doing organized raiding, it's just natural: the game did not provide as many options as it does now, the content was not as diverse as it is today, so it was just easier that players felt inclined to raid and in most situations the only way to really do it was joining a guild.

Today the game provides a lot of alternatives in so many aspects that the lower levels of raiding do not need that kind of social structure nor the game is so bidimensional when it comes to types of content, and that's not a bad thing, but has a negative effect on the higher levels of raiding. This has been going on for some time, legion just made things worse.

[JIMM-]

The game gets oversimplified and easy, shame on the devs for catering to the casuals.
The game gets hard content that takes skill and dedication to clear, shame on the Devs for catering to the elite.
What do you people even WANT??

uh.... this AP n RNG grind catered for no one , if u think legion caters the casuals then im sorry to inform you, the casuals already unsubbed

[Eapoe]

Me neither but there is a vocal minority of people that feel like they have to "beat the game" and do everything as quickly as possible. It's like going to an all you can eat buffet, and rather than pacing yourself, eating 10 plates full of food and then spending a half hour in the bathroom puking.

It's more like going to an all you can eat buffet, where the all you can eat portion starts after you've already bought and eaten an appetizer. For every 1 piece of food you eat they write a tiny little sliver of a letter of your name on the wall. If you get your whole name on the wall you can stop eating. The next day you get to repeat this process.

[Flurryfang]

You say casuals like AP because it gives them something to work for. Something like what? Honestly?
And to be fair when I say casual I mean someone who mainly focuses on WQs, other solo content and maybe some PUG LFR and Normal raids for a few hours a week. So for that kind of person what kind of reward is the few percentage of AP points giving them? So they can beat LFR and Normal raids faster?

The underlying point here is that the theme of the expansion is that in order for the champions of azeroth to beat the legion, they need super powerful weapons. And originally in WOW this is why raids only had one difficulty because that was supposed to be the hardest content in the game. So for those playing the hardest content of course there had to be a means of players advancing the power of their characters through progression to beat that harder content. But a casual technically is never going to seriously attempt this so why do they need all the extra power?

It is fine that people like this sense of progression for whatever content they do but if they aren't going to do harder stuff then there is really no need for them to get large boosts to power. Balancing the reward of player power based on harder levels of content has always been the way the game worked in the past. But Blizzard decided to start showering all characters with the ability to gain powerful increases to power whether they were going to use it or needed it or not. If you only have so much time a week and like to do other things other than raiding, what on earth do you need the large numbers of AP, the TF/WF and legendaries for? And why should you care if people who choose to do harder content get bigger rewards for their efforts?

Like what? Well something Most people don't play the game for specific purpose or goal, they just play to spend their time relaxing or spacing out. At that point, it does not really matter what you hunt for, just that there is something to gain People play for many kind of reason and some people are what we called objective-lead. This means, that for them to enjoy a game, there has to be a clear objective or goal. It does not matter what that objective or goal, just there is something specific to go after. This is again something which AP provide. It provides a goal to hunt.

So it does not really matter that mythic raiders get a huge reward, just that there is still a reward to be gotten by the casual playerbase. Every part of the WoW community needs some kind of constant reward for hard work, and since we have a game, that is based mostly on fighting, then that reward have to have an impact on that fighting That is where power comes in. You ask why casual players need legendaries, AP and TF? Well, its because it is BLizzards answer to the need for increasing power. I personally think that they could have done it other ways, like only having AP work outside of raiding and WF/TF and legendaries only dropping in raids, but i don't control the dev team and decide on this

[IceMan1763]

the top of the pve ladder has been going, for literally years, into an ever crasier escalation of what is required to be top at pve.

before it was, farm stuff, farm food, farm gear, spend hours raiding

it became: have one reroll do split raids.

last xpac, it again escalated to, 4-5 split raids...

this xpac, some guilds went 5-6 split raids with all artefact at 54...

I am not talking about guilds that pretend to be good and tried to emulate the top 10 by asking for 2-3 plit raids. They are currently breaking down on my server, fast.

This escalation of things have been created by guilds at the top. the raid leaders are responsible for the expectation they are setting, not blizzard.

Hopefully, those guild will do something like agree to a charter.

field no more than 30 characters per guild
no split run

The solution should be that sites like wowprogress.com put in a different ladder for guilds that follow this charter and for blizzard to enhance their api to be able to track if guilds are split raiding and if more than 30 characters participate in raid activity within a guild. (stop: this can obviously be tweaked to take into account trial players etc, dont judge get a mental block here)

The solution will come from both wowprogress and blizzard API and the players.

The most ridiculous post yet in this thread.

It's equivalent to saying "It's not the responsibility of the MLB to ban steroids. Players should just see that it's bad and all agree together not to use them."

Do you even hear yourself?

[InfiniteCharger]

Like what? Well something Most people don't play the game for specific purpose or goal, they just play to spend their time relaxing or spacing out. At that point, it does not really matter what you hunt for, just that there is something to gain People play for many kind of reason and some people are what we called objective-lead. This means, that for them to enjoy a game, there has to be a clear objective or goal. It does not matter what that objective or goal, just there is something specific to go after. This is again something which AP provide. It provides a goal to hunt.

So it does not really matter that mythic raiders get a huge reward, just that there is still a reward to be gotten by the casual playerbase. Every part of the WoW community needs some kind of constant reward for hard work, and since we have a game, that is based mostly on fighting, then that reward have to have an impact on that fighting That is where power comes in. You ask why casual players need legendaries, AP and TF? Well, its because it is BLizzards answer to the need for increasing power. I personally think that they could have done it other ways, like only having AP work outside of raiding and WF/TF and legendaries only dropping in raids, but i don't control the dev team and decide on this

Agreed. I think we concur.

Unfortunately I believe it is this way because there has been a vocal group who have argued that everyone should get everything no matter how much or how hard the content is they run. And this is blizzards response to that.

These folks shouldn't care what high end raiders do because they are technically not affected but for some reason they care a whole lot.

[psyquest]

The most ridiculous post yet in this thread.

It's equivalent to saying "It's not the responsibility of the MLB to ban steroids. Players should just see that it's bad and all agree together not to use them."

Do you even hear yourself?

it is up to you to use steroids... the sport (about all of them) tell you you are going to get banned if you use them

So sorry, your exemple does not make any sense.

I have played this game for 12 years+ now. I have seen it all. Blizzard cannot and will not do anything that stops people from playing.

Yes, I am saying it is up to raid leaders. I am one of them. I am not asking for my members to have 2-3 alts. Do I want to take my team into a burn out and do what the others are doing? no. I am not interested in doing that shit.

Those raiders have burned themselves out. Blizzard pushed no one to run 5-6 split raids and farm 54 points per legendary per character.

If anyone is stupid enough to attempts that and get burned out, their problem.

again your analogy with sport makes zero sense. In sport the sport bodies have a way to control what players ingest and verify that they DONT ingest shit. Blizzard provides gaming entertainment, they are not going to put timers on accounts nor check what players are doing (like split raiding). They cannot control that. guilds will just ask their members to have multiple accounts....

[Deleted]

Ya know what? 99% of WoW players could not give two fucks about high-end Mythic guilds. They won't be missed, and designing the game around them is strategic fail anyway.

- - - Updated - - -

So WoW finally became too difficult at the high-end.

Good.

[IceMan1763]

again your analogy with sport makes zero sense. In sport the sport bodies have a way to control what players ingest and verify that they DONT ingest shit. Blizzard provides gaming entertainment, they are not going to put timers on accounts nor check what players are doing (like split raiding). They cannot control that. guilds will just ask their members to have multiple accounts....

Your analogy is the one that makes zero sense.

No one ever asked Blizzard to put timers on accounts, any sane player is asking for reasonable, rolling caps to how much you can power up your character per week through AP. Split raiding could absolutely be addressed through changes to the loot system or by other methods. Ion has even said in the last 4 months that he would like to do away with the practice, so even the lead designer (who is a moron) disagrees with you on that.

To say Blizzard has no control over this situation is just asinine. They absolutely could do multiple things to even the playing field, they just refuse to do them because they're lazy or just don't care. Please stop encouraging the devs to be lazy by pretending nothing can be done.

[Flurryfang]

Agreed. I think we concur.

Unfortunately I believe it is this way because there has been a vocal group who have argued that everyone should get everything no matter how much or how hard the content is they run. And this is blizzards response to that.

These folks shouldn't care what high end raiders do because they are technically not affected but for some reason they care a whole lot.

Yeah i think we kinda agree.

I also have heard this group before, people crying about not being able to get tier stuff in LFR and having to go into heroic for a moose mount back in WoD.

At some point i understand that group though, because before there was not any reward to get after heroic/mythic dungeons, if you did not want to dedicate yourself to raiding. You kind of meet a zone barren of rewards, because Blizzard wanted you to go into raiding so much, that they removed most of the power rewards outside of raiding during some periods of the game. Again a good point why i like AP. It is an area of power, where everybody can get to the top, yet mythic players get to keep having their reward of very high item lvl gear pieces.

[psyquest]

Your analogy is the one that makes zero sense.

No one ever asked Blizzard to put timers on accounts, any sane player is asking for reasonable, rolling caps to how much you can power up your character per week through AP. Split raiding could absolutely be addressed through changes to the loot system or by other methods. Ion has even said in the last 4 months that he would like to do away with the practice, so even the lead designer (who is a moron) disagrees with you on that.

To say Blizzard has no control over this situation is just asinine. They absolutely could do multiple things to even the playing field, they just refuse to do them because they're lazy or just don't care. Please stop encouraging the devs to be lazy by pretending nothing can be done.

I am waiting for you to come up with a loot system to discourage split raiding without affecting normal raiders that dont do split raiding. No one has managed to come up with a solution, may be you can?

putting a cap on AP is like putting a cap on the number of mythic + you can do a week. The AP is just a nerf mechanism blizzard is using to not have to ressort to those auras in raid that nerf raids.

Blizzard does not refuse and listens and no they are not lazy, they actually working their asses off. You are one of those guys that just think that they are tone deaf and doing their things without checking the impact on players?

Note also that those guilds affected by AP farming and split raiding are actually statistically irrelevant. It is a tiny insignificant number compared to the number of subscribers. Any solution that could affect the vast majority to please this tiny minority will not happen.

I remember a thread on this reached hundred of pages with no one coming up with a solution.

Waiting for you to describe your solution.

[Deleted]

I have played this game for 12 years+ now. I have seen it all. Blizzard cannot and will not do anything that stops people from playing.

Every person has its own comfort zone in feeling good playing a game. A borderless enviroment to serve the wanted desires is the best they can do

If you buy an another game, candy, cigarettes or a loaf of cheese, its your decission how fast you consume it.

[IceMan1763]

I am waiting for you to come up with a loot system to discourage split raiding without affecting normal raiders that dont do split raiding. No one has managed to come up with a solution, may be you can?

putting a cap on AP is like putting a cap on the number of mythic + you can do a week. The AP is just a nerf mechanism blizzard is using to not have to ressort to those auras in raid that nerf raids.

Blizzard does not refuse and listens and no they are not lazy, they actually working their asses off. You are one of those guys that just think that they are tone deaf and doing their things without checking the impact on players?

Note also that those guilds affected by AP farming and split raiding are actually statistically irrelevant. It is a tiny insignificant number compared to the number of subscribers. Any solution that could affect the vast majority to please this tiny minority will not happen.

I remember a thread on this reached hundred of pages with no one coming up with a solution.

Waiting for you to describe your solution.

I'm not the lead dev or on the dev team... it's not my job to come up with solutions. However, a really simple solution in my mind is to build upon/improve the personal loot system while adding bad luck protection. After all, trading loot/master loot is what enables split raiding to work. I know some people will cry about not being able to trade, but if you are guaranteed to get the item (BLP) if you kill the boss enough times (let's say 20 for s & gs), is it really that bad? This game shouldn't be primarily about loot anyway and it's the trading (or master looting, either way) that causes the problem. If some infantile person wants to quit over not being able to beg for another person's loot, I think the community is frankly better off.

They don't listen... they proved that starting with flying. They go on their own quests for their own pet features and ignore all feedback. I am one of MANY former players who feels that way over the last few years and judging by the forum reaction to Ion's latest post on AP in 7.2, a good portion of current players feel that way too. I won't discount that they work hard, but the systems devs have really screwed things up with some incredibly poor design decisions in this xpac. Then they bury their heads in the sand and double down on their pet design. It's a real problem at this point.

AP farming, split raiding, farming TFs, and farming legos affect the WHOLE Mythic raiding community, regardless of how much time the guild or player plays, because Blizzard tunes around the people putting in crazy amounts of out of raid time grinding. Then they brag in their quarterly report about how high their non launch quarter total played hours was. Gee, I wonder why. Then they go on a Q&A, something that should be positive in nature, and insult guild leaders who are just playing by their rules. Their audacity and ego have no bounds.

So, now I'm waiting for you to cry about how trading items is 100% necessary (it's not in any way, shape, or form). Let's hear your reasoning.

[Deleted]

Fact is, WoW is much more than a game for some people. And this is where the problem starts. Should Blizzard keep that in mind? Or should they still design it like a game instead of a job.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Going to venture a guess that if they designed the game around people having to play 80 hours a week far more guilds and people would be burning out and quitting. Legion just gives you the choice to do so or not. If people CHOOSE to play the game to that point and they hate it then they have absolutely no one to blame but themselves. If you make the choice to play 80 or 90 hours a week to grind 1000s of Maw of Souls or roll the dice for a 1 in a million chance to get a titanforged it isn't Blizzards fault. It isn't at all. You made that choice 100% on your own. I mean clearly even the top end guild players and even leaders dislike playing this way. At least a lot of them. So why the fuck are you playing in that fashion. You get paid? You getting the ladies? Truth is you aren't getting much besides a front page MMO Champion "look who is cool for the next 15 minutues" screen shot / post. Get over it. You burned yourself out to earn nothing but bragging rights and some kids on forums pretending to love you. Well played.. well... fucking.. played.

[-Joker-]

Fact is, WoW is much more than a game for some people. And this is where the problem starts. Should Blizzard keep that in mind? Or should they still design it like a game instead of a job.

If it were intended to be a job, we'd all be getting paid. People who make it INTO a job do so of their own volition.

[mmouser]

So, now I'm waiting for you to cry about how trading items is 100% necessary (it's not in any way, shape, or form). Let's hear your reasoning.

I raid normal. I do it for fun and to help my guildies progress. I have no need of normal as I am decked out in 898 gear from M+ 15's that I do enjoy. Any gear I get is pointless unless it titanforges 30+ ilvls. So trading provides me an opportunity to help my fellow friends. With trading of personal loot we have something better than BLP...we have the ability to actually help our raiders and to get us eventually out of normal faster and into heroic.

IF and I do mean IF, the bad luck protection was per boss then maybe I would be ok with it. BLP before was whole raid so it was actually better to spend rolls on bosses you don't want to get gear later on bosses you do want.

But see, the issue is that you are over complicating it. If mythic raiders want to be purely about skill and not gear, then the legion PvP tech needs to be applied to PvE with scaling. This is how I would do it:

Every raider is scaled to 890 reguardless of current ilvl. If you are above 890, then your ilvl increases your power similar to PvP. Even at a 100ilvl difference, that power increase will be around 10% which is minimal. This then allows the mythic raiders to use the most itemized pieces instead of farming multiple split runs. You could be fully decked out in crafted blues and still scale up. I would also remove set bonuses and trinkets. This would allow complicated mythic bosses that would require strategy even on boss #1 and some of the need for DPS boss checks can go away.

This would also open the door for anyone to do mythic. Once the achievement is gone for cutting edge, then remove the scaling. No need to nerf the bosses as the scaling was the mechanic that made them more difficult. This would treat mythic just like challenge modes of WoD and MoP.

[IceMan1763]

I raid normal. I do it for fun and to help my guildies progress. I have no need of normal as I am decked out in 898 gear from M+ 15's that I do enjoy. Any gear I get is pointless unless it titanforges 30+ ilvls. So trading provides me an opportunity to help my fellow friends. With trading of personal loot we have something better than BLP...we have the ability to actually help our raiders and to get us eventually out of normal faster and into heroic.

IF and I do mean IF, the bad luck protection was per boss then maybe I would be ok with it. BLP before was whole raid so it was actually better to spend rolls on bosses you don't want to get gear later on bosses you do want.

But see, the issue is that you are over complicating it. If mythic raiders want to be purely about skill and not gear, then the legion PvP tech needs to be applied to PvE with scaling. This is how I would do it:

Every raider is scaled to 890 reguardless of current ilvl. If you are above 890, then your ilvl increases your power similar to PvP. Even at a 100ilvl difference, that power increase will be around 10% which is minimal. This then allows the mythic raiders to use the most itemized pieces instead of farming multiple split runs. You could be fully decked out in crafted blues and still scale up. I would also remove set bonuses and trinkets. This would allow complicated mythic bosses that would require strategy even on boss #1 and some of the need for DPS boss checks can go away.

This would also open the door for anyone to do mythic. Once the achievement is gone for cutting edge, then remove the scaling. No need to nerf the bosses as the scaling was the mechanic that made them more difficult. This would treat mythic just like challenge modes of WoD and MoP.

Wanting to help fellow players is a noble endeavor, but with properly designed BLP I really don't think trading loot would be missed that much. I think helping kill bosses beneath your skill and ilvl is help enough, personally.

I really don't have a problem with a scaling Mythic scene per se... I think it would be an interesting thing to attempt but being such a massive change I also see it as risky. My suggested design keeps the primary dynamic in place so that guilds have a reason to farm. The guilds who clear first (assuming Blizzard keeps raid content coming every 20-30 weeks, which would be awesome) will gain a slight advantage (which I think is fine) because they will be able to reach the BLP number and have more gear overall heading into the next tier. The advantage would be no where near what is gained from split raiding, however.

I would implement the BLP as being per boss, and per spec where applicable. I think keeping "coining" would be interesting as I would count the coin as a "kill" for the purposes of BLP. In that way, the BLP would work the exact opposite of what you describe and in a more ideal way. If you coin a boss every time you would get every piece of loot in 10 kills maximum (keep in mind this is napkin design and the numbers are totally hypothetical). Of course, you would be passing up the opportunity to coin on a different boss.

[psyquest]

So, now I'm waiting for you to cry about how trading items is 100% necessary (it's not in any way, shape, or form). Let's hear your reasoning.

I could not care less about item trading. For me the best times of wow were vanilla/woltk, there was no trading...

Unfortunately item trading removal alone wont affect split raiding. Those guilds will still run multiple raid in order to field to best comps possible... Remember the number of moonkins paragons fielded against Ragnaros?

What is required is something that completely renders split raiding useless and that is:

1-classes as equal as possible with better designed bosses that do not require x of class y to succeed.

2-removal of loot trading.

1 is infortunaly near impossible. Classes will never be equal.

[IceMan1763]

I could not care less about item trading. For me the best times of wow were vanilla/woltk, there was no trading...

Unfortunately item trading removal alone wont affect split raiding. Those guilds will still run multiple raid in order to field to best comps possible... Remember the number of moonkins paragons fielded against Ragnaros?

What is required is something that completely renders split raiding useless and that is:

1-classes as equal as possible with better designed bosses that do not require x of class y to succeed.

2-removal of loot trading.

1 is infortunaly near impossible. Classes will never be equal.

I don't deny what you're saying, but cases where stacking a single class/spec is necessary to defeat a boss are few and far between. Also, frankly, I think if Blizzard were really concerned about a level and fair Mythic raiding environment that they should restrict the number of a single spec (considering a raid size of 20) to 3. I don't think that's an unfair rule and while it doesn't totally shut down raid stacking, it certainly limits it. It also encourages more class/spec diversity which I don't see as a bad thing.

Edit - AP making it hard to switch specs makes this rule a bit more unfair to implement, unfortunately. However, I see that more as an AP design problem... AP should have always been class wide in my opinion.