Blizzards 25 man mistake.

[Deleted]

Has it not occurred to you that this is equivalent to having a higher skill requirement in 25s to make the same progress?

There is no higher skill needed for the chance of failure to increase.

Yes, there are more people in a 25 man, so given equal player skill you will wipe more times in 25s to kill the boss (more people who can screw up and cause a wipe). This is why you need higher personal skill and performance in 25s for everyone in the raid.

No, you don't. You need the same skill as in 10 man. What you don't get is the same chance at a reward.

I gave the example earlier of lifting and lowering your knee - it's just as easy to do on your own as in a group of 25 people. However, if your reward is based on all 25 of you doing it without messing it up at the same time, then your chance of being rewarded goes down. The actual difficulty of the task remains the same, however.

To say that 25 man is more difficult you have to point to extra tasks that need to be performed while playing the game. The argument is solid if you look at the raid leader, and maybe the healers have to alter their playstyle a tad. For the DPS and tanks, on the other hand - same deal as 10 man. So out of 25 people maybe 4 or 5 have something different to do then if they were in a 10. Does this justify all 25 getting more reward? Can't see why it does, really.

[Hyrican]

Downsizing as a means to easier progress should not be compared to a standard 10man guild. Indeed most of the time it has consequences for the 25man raid willing to try it for shorttime easier progress.

Injin has a good point about failure rates... Not every encounter has a complete Raidwipe function if one player fails, but for the ones that do, can you really say the difficulty of watching e.g. for a debuff on themselves is for a single raider harder in 10 or 25m? So even in this extreme situation (because most of the failures hurt or kill only the player or a few others and not result in a direct wipe) the individual difficulty is the same, but the chance everyone reacts right is lower. But this is the chance we are talking about and on average. These are the fights that seem harder for 25man but they are equally difficult for the player. But on average a 25m raid has a slightly higher chance of wiping, because there are 25 people who can fail, so it is more likely one of the 25m will fail during that try. But for the individual the requirements stay the same. The higher chance of wiping also only holds true if the same percentage of people have to react. So 1 to 2.5 or 1 to 3 (e.g. for dispels). Most of the encounters limit the personal failure of a "normal" player without a special job on the boss, so this does not lead directly to a raidwipe. That is why 25man have a higher limit on ressurections for example to offset the amount of failures during a try. But this is only counting actual failure amounts in no relation to raidsize. The effect of a failure that does not lead to a direct wipe is equal, but in relation to raidsize bigger in 10m. To achieve roughly equal difficulty AND roughly equal time invested or raid tries to kill a boss on 10m and 25m is difficult enough. We should be astonished how equal they really are in terms of difficulty AND amount of tries to kill.

Most of the encounters give raidwipe functionality only to special roles (most of the time tanks, dispellers or interrupters), so the actual difference in chance to reward is not as big as the example of lifting your knee at the same time...


The difference is greater in the way the playerbase is structured.

The game lost a lot of young players willing to raidlead 25man (they get older, have less time, amount of new players is shrinking). I think the age distribution changed a good amount during the years. The number of players who have the time, enough information, confidence, are known on the server as capable, are on the right server to start 25m and have not already done so will not offset the 25m raidleaders and officers who leave because they have less time as they get older to play WoW but keep playing the game with less overhead work besides raidingtime. The demographic changed and blizzard responded with equalizing 10man raids. Yes 25man helps guild and server community but almost every medium server is beyond the point of no return in regards to 25m raiding. The biggest hurdles are server distinctions for new blood.
Blizzard should just allow cross-server guilds as mid-term solution. Keep the restrictions for trading, but allow cross-server raiding actual content and all players wanting to raid 25man without organizing one can do so, and the organizers can do recruting on wowprogress or openraid. Heck i would raid with 2 very good twinks, but there are no good twinkruns left on my server. The general decline of the average actual gametime played per person is strongly related to the amount of people they can play with, that is why LFR and LFD is so successful.

[Hakto]

Many of the end bosses on heroic have had single player raid wipe abilities.

Rag, Spine, Madness, Spirit Kings, Elegon, Garalon, Blade Lord, Wind Lord, Amber Shaper, Empress, Lei Shi, Sha of Fear, I'm sure most of the others this tier are easily wiped by 1-2 player mistakes as well.

[MoanaLisa]

Laziness, because if they were so intent on doing it then they would form 25 man groups.

I'll be perfectly honest and this gets at the logistics thing from the player point of view. I can't even count the number of times I showed up during Wrath and Cataclysm on raid nights and we would waste time deciding what to do or calling around looking for people because we were one or two short. It really happened a lot and while I'm on record as clearly preferring 25's in an ideal world (for many of the same reasons that Radalek so excellently stated in his post about raiding and community), that's something about them I didn't like at all and haven't missed since then. And it was a decent guild that was well-respected on our server. There were lots of nights when everything fell into place right away but more than a few when it didn't.

I'm certain I'm not the only person that feels this way and would prefer to be in a raid group that assembles easily and without a lot of issues. This is 100% from the player's perspective: the perspective where you sign up, you arrive on time with everything ready and then wait an hour for others.

There's MUCH less of that in 10-man groups for obvious reasons although I'm sure it happens frequently in some guilds.

Even when you have the people to manage a 25m raiding guild and eager and willing to do so, a year or so of the hassles that can go along with the larger size are wearing.

[Deleted]

What I find surprising is you continue to post on a subject you sometimes appear to know nothing about. [...]

There is not one person on earth who has progressed through 25m and 10m. It is impossible. The anecdotes go along the lines of "I progressing on this in 25m, and then later on made a 10m group and now I'm able to compare."

That's why 1/3 of the current 10 man raiders would like to raid 25 man if they could. How do you explain that?

Where did you get this number from? Why don't I see hunderds of thousands of posts on MMOC about 10m raiders looking for 25m raiding guilds? Where are all these guild masters and raid leaders who are recruiting for their 25m guild?

[Deleted]

There is no higher skill needed for the chance of failure to increase.

Higher chance of failure is one aspect that makes 25s harder (there are other aspects but for now lets focus on the failure chance). In order to counter that higher chance of failure you can either get higher skilled players that fail less, or put in more effort and do more tries. So now compared to 10 mans we have to put in more effort and/or be more skilled in 25 mans. Thus it follows that the rewards should also be greater in 25 mans.

[akris15]

There is not one person on earth who has progressed through 25m and 10m. It is impossible. The anecdotes go along the lines of "I progressing on this in 25m, and then later on made a 10m group and now I'm able to compare."

Your kidding right alot of people do this. My raid leader and two other raiders in my 10 man team run in a 16/16 HM team and we are 12/16 HM. I used to do this back in Cata until my 25 man guild died and I just gave up on looking for another 25 because there was literally only 4 25 man guilds in the US that met my times on Alliance looking for a healing monk. If I could find a guild that needs a monk and 25 then I would be doing 10/25s again.

[Durandro]

Higher chance of failure is one aspect that makes 25s harder (there are other aspects but for now lets focus on the failure chance). In order to counter that higher chance of failure you can either get higher skilled players that fail less, or put in more effort and do more tries. So now compared to 10 mans we have to put in more effort and/or be more skilled in 25 mans. Thus it follows that the rewards should also be greater in 25 mans.

Bolded for incorrectness.

It depends entirely on the encounter whether 10 or 25 man is 'more difficult'. The concept that a raider needs more skill to be part of a bigger team is quite amusing to say the least. If that were true then LFR would require more skill then 10 man heroic.

Context matters.

Time and time again its shown certain encounters are considerably harder on 10 man, and raid makeup is much more important.

So all I can really gather from posts like yours is ego stroking because you're probably in a 25 man guild (or used to be). As someone who's done 10 and 25 man raiding, leading, healing and dpsing, I can say they both have their challenges.

Context matters.

[Radalek]

Bolded for incorrectness.

It depends entirely on the encounter whether 10 or 25 man is 'more difficult'. The concept that a raider needs more skill to be part of a bigger team is quite amusing to say the least. If that were true then LFR would require more skill then 10 man heroic.

Context matters.

Time and time again its shown certain encounters are considerably harder on 10 man, and raid makeup is much more important.

So all I can really gather from posts like yours is ego stroking because you're probably in a 25 man guild (or used to be). As someone who's done 10 and 25 man raiding, leading, healing and dpsing, I can say they both have their challenges.

Context matters.

Incorrect. Blue post:
"25-player raiding is more complex on a macro level (more moving pieces). Even perfect tuning doesn't compensate for the logistical difficulties."

[Deleted]

It depends entirely on the encounter whether 10 or 25 man is 'more difficult'. The concept that a raider needs more skill to be part of a bigger team is quite amusing to say the least. If that were true then LFR would require more skill then 10 man heroic.

If you're going to just jump in, at least try to understand what's being said. This was purely about 25 mans having higher failure rate due to the simple fact that if one person fails at probability P, you expect 25*P fails in 25s while only 10*P in 10s.

So all I can really gather from posts like yours is ego stroking because you're probably in a 25 man guild (or used to be).

And all I can see is an ad hominem where there should be an actual argument. Do people still believe that 25 man raiders put in all the effort just to impress some scrubby baddies?

[Deleted]

Your kidding right alot of people do this. My raid leader and two other raiders in my 10 man team run in a 16/16 HM team and we are 12/16 HM. I used to do this back in Cata until my 25 man guild died and I just gave up on looking for another 25 because there was literally only 4 25 man guilds in the US that met my times on Alliance looking for a healing monk. If I could find a guild that needs a monk and 25 then I would be doing 10/25s again.

I'm not kidding, and you are not doing this, and you didn't get the point of the post. You cannot progress kill Stone Guards (or a more difficult boss) 10m and 25m at the very same time. You'll always have a previous experience. That was the point of that post.

[Talen]

Incorrect. Blue post:
"25-player raiding is more complex on a macro level (more moving pieces). Even perfect tuning doesn't compensate for the logistical difficulties."

More complex? Yes...but that doesn't mean more difficult, more challenging overall unles Blizzard fails in balancing it correctly...which has, at times, happened.
And yes....perfect tuning within the raid, something which Blizzard can control, resulting in both formats beign equally as challenging in every way, does nothing for the logistical difficulties outside the raid, which are aspects Blizzard has little if any control over.

EJL

[Radalek]

More complex? Yes...but that doesn't mean more difficult, more challenging overall unles Blizzard fails in balancing it correctly...which has, at times, happened.
And yes....perfect tuning within the raid, something which Blizzard can control, resulting in both formats beign equally as challenging in every way, does nothing for the logistical difficulties outside the raid, which are aspects Blizzard has little if any control over.

EJL

But you missed the point again of what that blue post said. If you have perfectly balanced boss between 10 and 25 it would still be unfair comparasion due to logistical difficulties within the raid.

[Talen]

If you're going to just jump in, at least try to understand what's being said. This was purely about 25 mans having higher failure rate due to the simple fact that if one person fails at probability P, you expect 25*P fails in 25s while only 10*P in 10s.p

Which is true.

So the question then is....do you honestly believe Blizzard doesn't balance around these dlittle details? If you are going to complain that the formats aren't perfectly balanced ine every single aspect, state so. It's not whether mechanic A is more difficult or whether its easier to die to mechanic B in 10s....its whether the raids are equally as difficult, equally as challenging and require the same degree of effort.

Some will say yes, some will say no. I thought Blizzard did a fair job in Cata, I think they've done a better job in MoP.

Blizzard balances around a large numbers of factors - including those you have mentioned. But they never promised perfect equality. That 25 have a better chance of seeing someone fail is only an issue is that wasn't considered and balanced around.

But you missed the point again of what that blue post said. If you have perfectly balanced boss between 10 and 25 it would still be unfair comparasion due to logistical difficulties within the raid.

If we balance the boss to be equally as a challenging equallty as difficult and require the exact amount of effort regardless of format, and designed it so that each and every single mechanic was equally as difficult and challenging - in short, if we balance the encounter perfectly - we think 25s would still be unfair because they have an encounter that is more challenging because of the internal logistics.


There is an inherent contradiction in that. The truth is Blizzard could perfectly balance the raid but it doesn't matter when it comes to logistics because nothing they can do inside the raid can ever affect what happens to the logistics outside it.

Thats obvious....especially when you quote the entire answer where they speak of raid and guild logistics

A. In short, we're not satisfied with the current status of 25-player raids. There are clear logistical challenges to sustaining a 25-player raiding group. It's inherently 2.5 times as much churn, and thus 2.5 times as much recruitment needed. In terms of actual encounter difficulty, while we haven't always succeeded, we feel that we can deliver on a comparable experience between the two modes: 10-player raiding often involves greater personal responsibility, while 25-player raiding is more complex on a macro level (more moving pieces). Even perfect tuning doesn't compensate for the logistical difficulties, though.

Tuning to a perfect balance of difficulty does nothing to account for the logistical challenges in sustaining a 25 man raiding group. I wish it did. But I see those challenges as the single biggest issue affecting 25s. Everything inside the raid is a matter of tuning and you can get to a state where the difference in effort and difficulty is marginal, at a point most players will ignore. Even the complexity of having 25 players around can be adjusted for.

The logistics cannot. You need to develop new systems to account for that. For example - one issue is that the raiding population is largely split into 5 modes (albeit with some crossover), and each size format is split into 2. The recruit pool for Normals and Heroics has shrunk with consequeences affecting recruiting, guild members ship and dealing with no-shows. Increasing the pool - CR Guilds - or compensating for it - Merc NPCs - could help adjust, but the latter has obvious concerns and the former would require Blizzard to rejig the social aspect around guilds and not servers.

No, I think it pretty clear they aren't talking about any in-raid logistics. Those can be adjusted for and, in a perfectly balanced setup, would be. The entire answer revolves round out of raid logistics.


So, that brings us back to my response.

Yes - 25s can be, and often are, more complex. But whats important is whether the difficulty is the same. Is the challenge, the effort, the workload the same? By and large - ignoring the raid leaders who do have a harder job in 25s for a variety of reasons - the answer is (IMO) yes. I can only hope 5.2 is at least as well balanced as 5.1. It's never going to be perfect though and you'll always have groups that due to skill, preference, ability, group make up or whatever will find one version much easier but I think 5.0s raids have been well balanced.

And no - not even perfect tuning inside the raid can affect the logistical issue affecting as guilds and raids outside the raid. It doesn't matter how even the difficulty between 10s and 25s will be; players will most often choose the raid that is easy and convenient for them to join, so long as it gives them what they want. Few people, for example, will be willing to learn Finnish and move to Finland so they can join Paragon. There is a limit to what players are willing to do.

EJL

[akris15]

I'm not kidding, and you are not doing this, and you didn't get the point of the post. You cannot progress kill Stone Guards (or a more difficult boss) 10m and 25m at the very same time. You'll always have a previous experience. That was the point of that post.

What in the world type of argument is that? It doesn't even make sense. First some fights you would approach differently as a the same 10 man than you would a 25 some examples include Lei Shi, Protectors, Will of the Emperor, Amber Shaper and Vizier. In 25 Will most guild would Ring of Frost all the rages until before the lull (prenerf) but 10s would outright kill them, 25s didn't have the healer logistic issue that's involved with 2 healing Vizier 10. Lei Shi 10s take a different approach on stack building than a 25 man guild does and so on.

Second you will see a fight before heroic 95% of the time through LFR or Normal (got to complete normal before you do heroic) so you will always build on previous experiences with that boss to add in the new mechanics.

Finally sometimes these guys are working on 25 and 10 the same week, naturally the opening few weeks of heroics.

I am not sure if serious or just insane troll logic?

P.S.
Also in cata I did both 10s and 25s progression and these raiders still do 10s and 25s for both progression...you know people can own more than one toon of the same class and gear them up to be near equal of their 10 man team and their 25 man team. I done this with my mages since late T11 up until my 25 man team died about 2 months ago.

[Espe]

If you're going to just jump in, at least try to understand what's being said.?

Might want to take your own advice. The Blizz devs have stated over and over again that 10m raiding requires much more executional (i.e. inside of the actual raid instance, when attempting boss kills) responsibility.

25m raiding is designed around having a few carries here and there. One person messing up isn't a big deal because there are several other standing around to pick up the slack. More healers to heal and more dps to dps.

Also more brezes.
More loot per boss.
Higher chance of gear being actually used.
etc, etc.

There is a good reason they don't have a 10m version of LFR even though it is often asked for. Check my sig for more details

In the end, if people just want the higher in-raid challenge of 10m, let them have it and let 25m raiding go the way of 40m raiding. Most raiders don't want to be carried to easy epics, and that is why most raiders are turning to 10m.

[akris15]

Might want to take your own advice. The Blizz devs have stated over and over again that 10m raiding requires much more executional (i.e. inside of the actual raid instance, when attempting boss kills) responsibility.

25m raiding is designed around having a few carries here and there. One person messing up isn't a big deal because there are several other standing around to pick up the slack. More healers to heal and more dps to dps.

Also more brezes.
More loot per boss.
Higher chance of gear being actually used.
etc, etc.

There is a good reason they don't have a 10m version of LFR even though it is often asked for. Check my sig for more details

In the end, if people just want the higher in-raid challenge of 10m, let them have it and let 25m raiding go the way of 40m raiding. Most raiders don't want to be carried to easy epics, and that is why most raiders are turning to 10m.

That is true for normal modes but do you really think people are getting carried on Heroic fights like Sha, Empress and so on? Heroics are designed to push your raid to its limit, if you had 3 dps die over the fight (losing their food buffs and so on) your not going to meet the tight enrages. On non-farm fights you need 0 deaths on fights that matter if you hope to meet enrages and such.

Yet if its so easy as you put it why isn't everyone rushing to these easy mode heroics? I mean more loot, more ways of being carried, more raid walls, ect so why isn't there more mid-level heroic 25s instead of 25s being more represented by high end heroic raiders but there are hardly no mid-level to casual 25s. There must be something more to it wouldn't you think?

(BTW your quote was them refering to LFR...not heroics...which is true 10s would be a terrible idea for LFR due to queue times and evening out skill distribution here's the transcript of the question)


The new LFR system you have in WoW now seems like a great way for people who dont have alot of time to donate to raiding guild environments a chance to see content that was most of the time closed to them, however I'm not a big fan of 25man raids. Is there any plans to add a 10man choice to the LFR system?

GhostCrawler: We think 25 works better for Raid Finder. The ratios of DPS to non DPS more matches the player population and there is less risk of getting an unviable group. In 25s you can afford to have a few deaths and you can even pull if you're backfilling a few players. Both really make you stop in your tracks on 10s. In 25, it's easier to fade back into the group if you're still not 100% confident in what you're doing. In 10s, it's harder to be a wallflower.

Source: http://www.wowhead.com/news&tag=q-a

Basically he's not saying that 10s are harder than 25s, GC is saying if those 5 AFK idiots are, well, AFK you can still pull with say the other 20 and still do the boss fine because its not tuned that high since LFR is tuned a little under 10 man normals (Ie you can do it with 10 "competent" people). Now if those 5 people are AFK in a LFR10 then, well half your raid is AFK and cant do much even if its tuned the same as LFR25. Having 20% of the raid AFK vs 50% of the raid AFK makes a difference. This tweet wasn't about skill, it was about the continuation of your raid with minimal interruptions.

I think someone needs to be a politician trying to twist the words of GC out of context into proving his theory.

[Talen]

In the end, if people just want the higher in-raid challenge of 10m, let them have it and let 25m raiding go the way of 40m raiding. Most raiders don't want to be carried to easy epics, and that is why most raiders are turning to 10m.

What higher in-raid challenge from 10s? The whole point of the system is they are equally as difficult. Blizzard feels 10s require more personal responsibility, 25 are more complex. Each turn offs in their own way.

And stop going on about that quote. That was soley about LFR and not 25s in general.

EJL

[Espe]

if you had 3 dps die over the fight (losing their food buffs and so on) your not going to meet the tight enrages. On non-farm fights you need 0 deaths on fights that matter if you hope to meet enrages and such.

This just isn't true. Watch some 25m progression kill videos. After you're done, imagine doing progression in a 10m group with 0 brezes because of comp.

Yet if its so easy as you put it why isn't everyone rushing to these easy mode heroics?

Once again, I think most people who raid do it for the challenge. What kind of challenge is there in dropping your recruitment standards to pick up a few more warm bodies? What kind of pathetic person would want to raid with 10-15 people they don't like just to coast to easy epics?

This is why 40m raiding died. This is why 25m raiding should just be left the way it is. It already has so, so many incentives over 10m. The people who enjoy the easier style of raiding with less personal responsibility can have their LFR/25m mode, and people who want a challenge with a tight-knit group of like-minded individuals can have 10m.

In the end, there is a reason there is only a 25m version of LFR. Check my sig for more details

---------- Post added 2013-02-09 at 10:52 PM ----------

What higher in-raid challenge from 10s?

As the Blizz devs have stated over and over again, there is a higher executional (i.e. inside of the actual raid instance) burden on 10m raiding.

Blizzard feels 10s require more personal responsibility

Exactly.

And stop going on about that quote. That was soley about LFR and not 25s in general.

If you actually take the time to read my post before replying you can clearly see that I state there is a reason there is only a 25m version of LFR.

Beyond that, whatever the original quote was in reply to, the ideas obviously translate to any 25m raiding.

Is this where I should ask you to stop posting EJL at the end of your posts? Are we allowed to tell other people what they should and should not be posting if we are not mods?

[akris15]

This just isn't true. Watch some 25m progression kill videos. After you're done, imagine doing progression in a 10m group with 0 brezes because of comp.

Like I said above I have done both 25s and 10s at the same time in the past and now a "forced" 10 man raider. Now these progression video you speak of...where they dead early in the fight? Which fights early in the tier or late? Where these deaths from enrage, ect?

I am just saying I would love to see a parse of a first kill for a 25 where 3+ people have under 90% active time that isn't an early boss, let alone an end boss like Sha.

I would challenge anyone to this..I would like to see a parse of a first kill in a 25 where 3+ people were under 90% active time.