Ideas on how to re-structure raids.

[Admuntour]

After having read countless threats about how the raiding model in Wrath is broken, I find that I agree and disagree at the same time.
On the one hand, it is good that raids are accessible to everyone because everyone is able to enjoy the game. However on the other hand, the accessibility has lead to some lead to a dumbing down of some content and a general unbalancing in some areas.
First I'll start by saying, I play a lot of games, and I generally enjoy a challenge and play them on hard mode. If for example I play Call of Duty, I play directly on Veteran and I'm done with it. If the game only lets me play on normal mode and as a reward I have the veteran difficulty available after finishing it, well to hell with it, I won't play the same game twice because it won't give the same satisfaction.

What I don't like about the current raid model is that, the sense of accomplishment is gone for the more hardcore raiders, doing the boss in normal mode only to do it again in HM is never going to be the same as downing him for the first time in hard mode. There should be no need to do easy mode to progress in hard mode, the two difficulty settings should be separate, so progression is linear. Also a hard mode encounter should be more then just the same boss with more HP, damage and 1 extra twist or ability it should be something radical that changes the very way you kill him, like Sartharion 3D or Firefighter where.

So, what I suggest is this, when you found a guild, you have the choice of doing 10 man, 25 man or 25 man HM. However, once chosen you can't switch to another difficulty mode for at least 1 month. This would prevent guilds from clearing something on 1 mode and then switching to another just for badges.
All badge loot is balanced around only running one type of raid per week. If you chose to leave your old guild for whatever reason, perhaps you feel its time to go more hardcore, when you leave it you reset your path and can join any guild of 10, 25 or 25 HM, however you can only do this once per month, again to prevent abuse.

The difficulties of these modes will be aimed at the following.
10 man, will be the most casual setting, for people that don't have much time to commit but still want to see the game, this mode will feature the simplest fights and most forgiving, for example Sartharion without drakes, ToC 10 normal mode, or ICC 10 with 30% buff.
25 man, for people willing to put more time, and want a bigger challenge, this difficulty mode will feature fights somewhat like Ulduar 25 normal, ICC 25.
25 man HM is going to be for the cream of the crop and it will feature fights that are not only challenging but in some way richer then the other modes. Examples will be Sartharion 3D to what Sartharion alone was, Yogg 0 etc.

Advantages of the system.
1st Reduces boredom, part of the problem with all the difficulty modes is that, they are all available at once, and badge rewards tend to be so expensive that, it forces people to farm multiple difficulties which gets boring fast. With this system you'll only ever see the same raid 2 times and that is only if your guild disbands or you change guilds and that case will be rare. This way you can enjoy the dungeon more.

2nd Difficulty scaling will be way better. A major problem with the current model is, making progression from one tier of content to the other fun and challenging for all. Well, if all difficulty modes are open at the same time, that is quite impossible.
As an example, lets take the progression from ToC 25 to ICC 25. Gear level in ToC 25 was 245, gear level in ICC 25 is 264. However we also have 258 gear that could have been gotten by the really hardcore for completing ToGC 25.
Now if we balance fights to be challenging for people in ToC 25 gear then the people in ToGC 25 gear will find the fights too easy. If we balance for people in ToGC 25 gear, then the fights will be way too hard for people in ToC 25 gear.
However, if the only way to progress is either from ToC 25 normal to ICC 25 normal, then the jump will always be from 245 to 264, and that is easier to balance.
In the same way the jump from ToGC 25 to ICC 25 hard will always be from 258 gear setting to 277 and this is again easier to balance.

3rd The epic feeling or raiding will come back for the more hardcore, when you kill a boss it won't be with the thought of "but now I have to kill him on HM again", this time it will be for good and the sense of accomplishment will be there.

Also, because I know for sure I'm going to be asked how PuGs are going to be run, well its simple.
When the raid leader forms a raid he choses weather he wants it to be a 10, 25 or 25 HM raid. The raid leader can also be assisted in his quest to find new players with a new in game tool that can measure a players skill by stats such as, times killed a boss, successful raids participated in, number of times wiped, number of times left from a raid before its completion etc. The raid leader will also have a new option named "Finish raid", once pressed people get a 1 more point in their successfully raids completed tab, and can leave without repercussions, leaving before the raid leader does this, or before all bosses are killed means you get 1 quitter point. This can be sued to identify the good, loyal determined players from the bads, winers and quitters. This also lets a raid leader conclude a raid early if people can't kill all the bosses, as is the case in most ICC 25 pugs that can only kill the first 4 bosses.
Also, while in the PuG raid, everyone can give a vote to all the members of the raid, a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". These votes can help indicate what players is good and what players is not. The raid leader can also be voted in a similar manner so you can check on the number of successful PuGs he has pulled of. Or if the leader is bad, or a ninja you can give him appropriate votes and this will be reflected and easy to see for everyone.
Once you kill 1 boss in any difficulty mode, be it 10, 25 or 25 hard, you are locked to that difficulty mode for the rest of the week.
Another idea would be to simply not allow non guilded players to run PuGs at all since it diminishes the value of a guild as a whole, but thats material for another topic.

This is my take on balancing the current raid model and also brining back the fun and challenge for hardcores while still keeping things fresh for everyone.

[vesseblah]

What I don't like about the current raid model is that, the sense of accomplishment is gone for the more hardcore raiders, doing the boss in normal mode only to do it again in HM is never going to be the same as downing him for the first time in hard mode. There should be no need to do easy mode to progress in hard mode, the two difficulty settings should be separate, so progression is linear. Also a hard mode encounter should be more then just the same boss with more HP, damage and 1 extra twist or ability it should be something radical that changes the very way you kill him, like Sartharion 3D or Firefighter where.

So, what I suggest is this, when you found a guild, you have the choice of doing 10 man, 25 man or 25 man HM. However, once chosen you can't switch to another difficulty mode for at least 1 month. This would prevent guilds from clearing something on 1 mode and then switching to another just for badges.

I've said this 20 times before, and here's one more...

You're either trolling or overestimating the need of average serious raiders for their sense of accomplishment. When Blizzard gave the opportunity and the choice of starting in easy mode vs hard mode with Ulduar, exactly one guild in the whole world chose hardmode on the first week, while few thousand others went for easymode kills.

People did it for 3 reasons:
1) to learn easymode tactics before engaging hard mode to make next raids easier
2) new loot to make hard mode easier, and
3) 15 minutes of fame for killing bosses first, regardless of difficulty

And yes, what you suggested about longer lock-outs could work to weed out the posers from the real harcore players. I'd like to add few clarifications to your idea.

1) when you get locked into easymode, you can not switch to hardmode for the next 4 weeks
2) once you're locked into hardmode, the instance lock is released only when the endboss is dead
3) Blizzard needs to plug all holes that reset instance ID's, including realm, faction and race switches.

This would make it very hard to shuffle around all kinds of alt and mirror raids to game the system, although not totally impossible. You'd be still free to do the instance on another lock-out with an alt and do learning runs, but you can not bring new loot to the hardmode tries for a long time.

[Admuntour]

I'm not trolling, I actually made an effort to bring some valid ideas to the table that will make casual/pug raids still possible while also making the more hardcore side still seem interesting.

In my opinion, there where several factors that contributed to guilds clearing Ulduar on easy mode first.
1st Even though there was no lockout if you wanted to do it HM or EM, Blizzard had envisioned a model where you first had to do easy mode to get to the hard mode, this was the natural path around things where balanced and most people chose to go along, but I'm not sure they where happy.
2nd Some guilds chose to do hard mode the instant they had them available, however, due to the big competition different guilds chose to work on different hard modes while farming some of the easier content.

Given the choice some guilds did hard modes, and I'm sure that, if Ulduar was tunned for a more linear EM and HM progression that more guilds would have gone the way of the hard mode first.
And as I've said, its easier to balance bosses and transitions from one raid tier to another from easy mode to easy mode and hard mode to hard mode respectively, then it is to balance from hard mode, to easy mode to hard mode again.

[Denalian]

exactly one guild in the whole world chose hardmode on the first week

Actually, it was more than one. Sadly they were not remembered for this, as apparently, killing easier things faster means more.

[Tore]

And how many remember Death and Taxes?

I remember D&T. Hell yeah, Korgath. Represent. Get them world firsts.

[vesseblah]

I'm not trolling, I actually made an effort to bring some valid ideas to the table that will make casual/pug raids still possible while also making the more hardcore side still seem interesting.

No matter how you look at it, most players do not actually want hard raids, what they want is bragging rights from doing exclusive content. Catering to that need will never meet with the philosophy of making all content available in easymode. There is nothing new anybody can bring to the table about the subject unless Blizzard decides to start releasing exclusive content again, and I really don't see that happening.

[Izenhart]

I agree on the issue about HM's, just increasing HP, damage and few more things, in the long term starts to be boring.

Right now we still have fights wich are..."enough" different from Normal modes, but they should all be so different, not just be a single drop in the water

[xxAkirhaxx]

You guys do realize that in the history of gaming that raising the difficulty generally -only- raises damage done and hp values and rarely adds new mechanics?

So why all of the sudden do HMs need to make the fight completely different? Why can't they just be more difficult?

[LeperHerring]

So, what I suggest is this, when you found a guild, you have the choice of doing 10 man, 25 man or 25 man HM. However, once chosen you can't switch to another difficulty mode for at least 1 month. This would prevent guilds from clearing something on 1 mode and then switching to another just for badges.
All badge loot is balanced around only running one type of raid per week. If you chose to leave your old guild for whatever reason, perhaps you feel its time to go more hardcore, when you leave it you reset your path and can join any guild of 10, 25 or 25 HM, however you can only do this once per month, again to prevent abuse.

You've described the problem very well. However, I think the solution is overly complex. All you really need to do is to get rid of easy/hardmode and have 10 man and 25 man share the same lockout. Ideally Blizzard should make completely different 10 and 25 man raid zones, where 25 mans are tuned the same way they were in TBC and 10 mans would be the short, pug-friendly stuff we have now.

[LeperHerring]

No matter how you look at it, most players do not actually want hard raids, what they want is bragging rights from doing exclusive content.

Bragging rights? Those of us who have raided end-game content for years now couldn't care less about "braggin rights" - who would you even brag to, some random people in Dala?! It's only the new players and casuals who seem to think there's something brag-worthy about end-game raiding.

[vesseblah]

Bragging rights? Those of us who have raided end-game content for years now couldn't care less about "braggin rights" - who would you even brag to, some random people in Dala?! It's only the new players and casuals who seem to think there's something brag-worthy about end-game raiding.

You missed the important word "most" in the quoted bit, so I'll rephrase a bit.

During Sunwell the breakdown of raiders would've looked something like this:
- The top 0.1% of raiders do it for the challenge and world firsts, they do not post mindless shit on forums
- Below the top are the 1-2% of raiders who complete the instances after few first nerfs somewhere around 2-4 months after world firsts, the vocal asshats who are interested in bragging rights belong to this group
- 98% of players who start raiding will never kill the last boss without easymodes, and couldn't give a damn about the top2% or posting on forums

Fallacy of many many posters on fansites such as MMOC is trying to fix the game around that 1-2% of vocal asshats who aren't either the majority of the players nor the real hardcore. Blizzard did the mistake of supporting and listening to that crew during first 5 years of the game, but no longer.

[LeperHerring]

Fallacy of many many posters on fansites such as MMOC is trying to fix the game around that 1-2% of vocal asshats who aren't either the majority of the players nor the real hardcore. Blizzard did the mistake of supporting and listening to that crew during first 5 years of the game, but no longer.

No, the fallacy of some people is thinking that pulling random numbers out of their ass somehow makes a convincing argument.

[Lenea]

Arguing about whether raiders want easy first kills or actual hard content aside, I think that's actually a good idea.

Casual guilds that raid could opt or 10 or 25 mans, depending on the size of the guild. The decisions for the guilds that want to overcome the toughest challenge would be whether to go straight for 25 man hard modes and risk wiping for a long time, or to start with 10/25 normals and switch to hard modes later. The guilds in the middle would probably switch to hard modes a few months in.

I only raid 10 mans with my guild, but I do like the fact that I can now see all the content. Back in Tbc, unless I was interested in pugging or a raid coalition (which I'm not), there were only 2 raids for me. Now there are 4, plus hard modes, plus single boss raids like Ony, Maly and Sarth.

[babyback]

I've been anti the hard modes from the start, its just boring. Just release two dungeons at the time as they did in TBC to keep people busy and make 10 and 25 version of everything.

[LeperHerring]

In between is Deathwhisper, where most guilds switch back to easymode. Indeed, this just proves the point that vesselblah is trying to make again and again. Most guilds cop out here, take the easy way, flip the switch - because they don't want to wipe their face here week after week and are displayed with a 1/12 hardmode tag. They do the easymode and switch to the next hardmode (then some complain how lol the next hardmode is. Deathwisper is killed by 0,79% of guilds.

All that proves is that people are rational and will take the most efficient route to clearing the place. You're once again advocating players to handicap themselves in various ways, and like I've explained before that makes raiding even less enjoyable than it already is.

[LeperHerring]

And for all who claim the fights are just more hitpoints, I tell them that they are either full of shit or lying to themselves. In the best case they haven't done them, in the worst case they haven't even read up on them before making dumb claims. If it was JUST more HP and damage, then our gear would have soaked that up by now.

Obviously you haven't done ICC hardmodes. Or can you explain how BQL is different in hardmode? The vast majority of fights don't have any added mechanics worth mentioning in hardmode.

[LeperHerring]

But hey, this is all theoretical anyways. Being able to chose to switch between hardmodes and normal modes, tailoring the raidnight to how your own guild likes it and even chosing "what wing" to do seems to work for the majority of players.

It certainly doesn't work for the majority of players I play with. My guild chooses and switches hardmodes and easy modes, but we don't do that because we like it, we do it because that's the most efficient way to do the instance. There's even scientific research (by, e.g., Daniel Gilbert) that shows that more choice leads to less happiness, as counter-intuitive as that might seem at first glance.

When I play I want to be thinking: "what can we do to beat this encounter as fast as possible", which is what drives creativity to come up with new tactics and more optimal ways to play. I don't want to be thinking: "which handicaps should we enable so that we don't beat this encounter too fast", which leads to stagnation and boredom.

Yes, there will always be some who say "Having to kill a boss on normal first takes my sense of epicness away". Yes, i can see that. If you tell those people "In Ulduar you could chose hardmodes from day 1, but most people chose normal modes first" the same people will explain to you why it is Blizzards fault that they HAD to do normal modes first ALTHOUGH they could have done only hardmodes.

Like I said, rational people will take the most efficient route to clearing the instance. If it means gearing up in easy modes before hardmodes, then that's what people will do. Suggesting anything else is precisely equivalent to suggesting that people un-equip some gear and do normal modes in ICC instead of hardmodes - end result is the same.

"Worth mentioning" - well, you basically found your way out. Added goo and ooze from the balconies in the Rotface / Festergut encounters - yes you can add that "not worth mentioning" - yet it seems enough in combination with damage and dps requirements to make the fight impossible for oh so many.

You were saying there's some wonderful changes to the bosses beyond increasing HP and damage in hardmodes. There aren't. The added difficulty is primarily from the increased HP and damage, while the slight changes to mechanics (throwing goo balls etc.) don't really add anything significant. This is evident from the fact that there are very small alterations to most tactics required between easy and hard modes, while significant changes to mechanics would require significant changes to tactics - the difference is that you can't afford fuckups in hardmodes without hitting enrages.

[LeperHerring]

Obviously the majority that I had in mind was the majority of the playerbase.

Yes, or more precisely, the random statistics you make up about the majority of the player base and the unsupported conclusions you make based on those statistics.

I'm just making my argument based on my experience, and unlike you I don't try to cloak it in some fake sense of legitimacy by invoking some mythical "majority of the playerbase".

[LeperHerring]

You know what happened with games like Aion, AoC and WAR? When players got bored or disliked those games after a certain time, they QUIT. Only WoW apparently has this funny thing where 10 million people keep playing a game they hate.

Yes, and vanilla and TBC WoW, which had a completely different raiding style, managed to create that huge player base while the WotLK model has failed to bring in more players. So why are you not arguing that the "majority of the playerbase" obviously like the vanilla and TBC model?

Oh..and you dodged the bit where you would explain why still you raid in a game and system you so clearly dislike.

I'm not here to explain why I play, I'm here to make an argument about how the raiding system should be like.

[Admuntour]

I believe the current raiding model is broken, and my opinion, and logic is, like other people have also pointed out. Vanilla and TBC, which had a way harder, casual unfriendly raiding environment managed to bring WoW subscription base to about 11.5 million. The fact Blizzard hasn't released any figures for the past 2 years shows the growth has stopped. If sales would have grown they would have released new reports to boast how successful their game is, just like they did with each milestone they reached.

There are two reasons why growth could have stopped.
One, the market is already over saturated, in other words no matter how could the game there was no one else willing to buy it.
Or the game has changed so much from what it was that it doesn't attract new players.

I could also argue that with the current model, Blizzard is actually losing money since, there are lots and lots of players, like me, that only want to see the end game content, they don't give a damn about difficulty. Once they cleared one tier of content, they cancel their payment and resume playing only when a new tier of content comes out. There is nothing to keep you in game for too long since gear is so easy to come by. Full T9 in 1 week with equivalent level gear from the new heroics. T10 in a couple of months of farming dailies, but you only need to log in for 15 minutes tops to do a daily. Perhaps farm 1 hour the dailies for some gold and thats it. And if a group of people is semi-competent they can clear ICC on easy mode in 3 days of 3 hours raiding each, or join a PuG that only lasts 2 hours, kills 4 bosses in ICC and only requires 1 day of activity.

From that I can only conclude that Blizzard truly cares about its subscription base and doesn't want to turn them all into a bunch of mindless grinding zombies that will play the game forever, even though it might bring more money.

Well, I have nothing against their desire to make the game more casual friendly and less grindy. However by making both 10 and 25 man open to everyone simultaneously they have made the game more grindy since to get the best loot in the fastest amount of time people will be farming both, and people will become borred with them faster. Why not have just one available at any one time? And why not give hard modes more polish so they actually feel like a different encounter.