Improve PUG tool - a universal solution to both hardcore and casual endgame players

[Deleted]

Right now, PUGs are underused and are generally a tool for discrimination towards casuals. If you don't have achievements and great gear, you end-up not being invited to any group, or kicked shortly after you get in.
Why are they bad:
- Raids above Normal are quite unforgiving to new or undergeared players
- You get in unexperienced players in, you get a quite high chance of wipe
- It privides elite players a chance to discriminate other players, to abuse them and treat them bad in general

How to improve them:
1. Remove health reset mechanic on bosses. If you wipe, boss does not return at full health. Either stays at same level, or get some back, like 10%.
It seems like removing some of the thrill of the encounters - even if you wipe, you don't loose much. But if you compare the level of frustration and level of satisfaction that this mechanic brings, you probably will notice that throughout the years you got much more of the first. And that's not what games should be for, no?
Adding a simple title-rewarding achievents for not wiping can fix this for you.
2. Rewards scale with performance.
- get back raid currency.
- all bosses or mobs have a limited value of currency to give upon kill. That is distributed among party members proportionally to their performance in the encounter.
- if you pull off 15% of the group's total dps, you get 15% of the reward to yourself, and the rest party members distribute what's left.
- DPS, healers and tanks have all separate reward pools to draw from.
- if the group only has 1 tank or healer, they are evaluated regarding pre-set statistics and get proportional reward
- no RNG drops from bosses. All bosses have a loot table, upon killing it you get a panel to "purchase" the loot you want with your currency

I think this will solve two major issues with nowadays raiding:
1. When using PUGs, elite players will not feel obliged to only allow other experienced players in the group. On the countrary, they will want to have less-performing players, ensuring more reward for themselves.
2. End of the frustrating boss resets that leads to disbanding of groups, end of thrice-frustrating RNG loot.

In the end, i think such a change will only improve the gameplay for everyone, good and bad players alike. There is no need to lower difficulty of any encounter, if your group is bad it will only take you more time to defeat a boss or complete a raid tier. If you are really bad, you will not be able to kill anything even though boss health does not reset. The fight will just prolong with hours and everyone'll leave.

Personally i believe that the current system "if your group is bad you never get pass this boss and cannot proceed in the tier" is bad and obsolete. As long as the group is intact, raid bosses should not reset.

[Feel The Power]

I hardly ever see people putting pug groups together since the group finder tool came into play.

[Deleted]

How does the health reset mechanic work with bosses that have varying phases?

If I pull 40% of my dps by padding out aoe on Blast Furnace when I should be focusing down important targets then do i deserve 40% of the loot?

[Deleted]

Bad ideas that will only make situation worse.

Boss not resetting means zerging bosses will be a new tactic. Who cares about proper tactics when boss slowly dies by simply throwing bodies at him?

Rewarding for performance means whoever outgears encounter most will get most rewards and whoever has worst gear will get least rewards, thus punishing people who have bad gear. Then how would that performance be measured? By dps/hps? Then meter whores will get all rewards, while people following tactics will get less rewards. Its a bad idea all around.

[Spl4sh3r]

The problem with performance based system is that there is no fight out there for DPS that is based purely on DPS, unless we go back to Naxxramas which had Patchwerk and that is IF the tanks can survive the whole fight and the hybrid DPS doesn't help healing. Also each class and specialization has to be measured against their own statistic to measure their worth because we all know that they aren't fully balanced to pull out the same numbers, whether it is DPS, Healing or Tanking.

[Summer]

Uh yeah. I don't see bosses not resetting their HP fit into raiding at all, even the LFR model of a stacking buff is better but in all honesty this whole idea just gives me the creeps. Maybe heroic mode is not meant for everyone to pug right? Many guilds do progress they enjoy in heroics and doing this would entirely destroy that as all bosses would inevitable die just by pulling it 50 times.

Secondly distributing loot according to dps is a horrible idea an only leads to padding, plus how were you thinking to include tanks or healers?

Also pugs being tools to discriminate towards casuals? I don't see this unless you mean the fact that people who know what they're doing don't want to take people who don't, which only makes sense. The so called casuals are entirely free to form their own all inclusive groups, the problem only arises when they want to be carried in groups they don't belong in.

[owbu]

I dont get it. If you want a "We win, even though we are bad" mode, you do not need to PuG. Because it doesnt matter who you bring. Thats why Lfr doesnt have an invite based system. And it already lets you see all the bosses/story.

Every difficulty above that, has to have a "if you arent playing well enough, you die" check, because lfr already took the "doesnt matter what you do" role. Having two of them would just be redundant.

As soon as you introduce a challenge, people will start to look for people around or above their own skill/experience. You cant change that. Except by removing the ability to choose, who you play with. Which leads to terrible gameplay. Which leads to content to be nerved until its not a challenge anymore. Which leads to it just being lfr again.

I get the wish to just be able to join the sucessfull groups. But the sucessfull groups are sucessfull, because they dont just let everyone in. So there is really no way around making your own groups/joinging suboptimal groups for a while untill you can join the "Has achivement" ranks.
If you are not into wiping with strangers- lfr or joining a guild is the thing for you.

[Deleted]

Bad ideas that will only make situation worse.

Boss not resetting means zerging bosses will be a new tactic. Who cares about proper tactics when boss slowly dies by simply throwing bodies at him?

And exatly how much time can a single group endure before disbanding? With this tactic, will the reward worth the repair costs, consumables, etc.?
Such tactic will never become universal since there is such high cost of wiping.

Rewarding for performance means whoever outgears encounter most will get most rewards and whoever has worst gear will get least rewards, thus punishing people who have bad gear. Then how would that performance be measured? By dps/hps? Then meter whores will get all rewards, while people following tactics will get less rewards. Its a bad idea all around.

Yes, main idea is that if you perform better, you get more reward. Logical, yes? Why should a player that fight tooth and nail get the same as the lazy one, eating sandwitch while spamming shadowbolts on the target. And if you have better gear, of course you get more out of it. And should be rewarded for it.
Since in large groups the difference will be like 5-10%, that doesn't make that much of a difference.

About reward-distributing mechanic, i only added dps as a example. There can be meters for hps contribution, total (not overlapping) control done, total support skill used, total movement, you name it.

[Feuerbart]

First of all it´s not 10-15% in lfr you can see up to 100-200% better players.

Second you can´t measure skill. You can try to aproximate it. But you can only aproximate it with context eg being there and seeing what people did.

DPS as a factor is unrealiable for simple reasons as bad luck with mechanics. Every stone debuff on gruul anyone?
Damage taken is another factor but you can´t count unavoidable damage. And still avoidable damage is not always avoidable. Double mechanics anyone? Or someone running into you with some explosion debuff?
And then there is this thing that is much more important than dps. Did you damage the right thing. Did you do the right thing for mechanics? Puddles on Furnace comes to mind.

You´d need to develop a measure for every spec for every fight with every role they have to play in any given raid. While theoretically doable it is just not feasible to do well.

And then there might be situations where it is better for the group that you take a meteor ablility solo and die to not stress the healers too much. Would you rate that good or bad? Depends on strats and situations.

So I´d say no way for such a solution. As much as I would like "skill" to be measurable aside from pure observation during a raid aka context to the pure numbers.

[Sansnom]

How to improve them:
1. Remove health reset mechanic on bosses. If you wipe, boss does not return at full health. Either stays at same level, or get some back, like 10%.

That sounds even a bigger help than the buffing players in LFR. Not sure if this is a good idea for normal and above because eventually it becomes a bruteforce. And I can see this being abused in combination with the "Performance". Kick almost everyone when the boss could be soloed and grab all the rewards.

It seems like removing some of the thrill of the encounters - even if you wipe, you don't loose much. But if you compare the level of frustration and level of satisfaction that this mechanic brings, you probably will notice that throughout the years you got much more of the first. And that's not what games should be for, no?
Adding a simple title-rewarding achievents for not wiping can fix this for you.
2. Rewards scale with performance.
- get back raid currency.
- all bosses or mobs have a limited value of currency to give upon kill. That is distributed among party members proportionally to their performance in the encounter.
- if you pull off 15% of the group's total dps, you get 15% of the reward to yourself, and the rest party members distribute what's left.
- DPS, healers and tanks have all separate reward pools to draw from.
- if the group only has 1 tank or healer, they are evaluated regarding pre-set statistics and get proportional reward
- no RNG drops from bosses. All bosses have a loot table, upon killing it you get a panel to "purchase" the loot you want with your currency

I think this will solve two major issues with nowadays raiding:

And who is to judge that performance? DPS is not always a race. If you require some players to handle specific mechanics, then their DPS will drop. Got a debuff and need to move away from the group and do nothing? Sure, but then their DPS will drop.

Giving people with higher DPS just segregate people further. Better gear = better DPS = better rewards = better gear = better DPS = better rewards = better gear etc. People that need the gear most are usually the people with the lowest gear.

1. When using PUGs, elite players will not feel obliged to only allow other experienced players in the group. On the countrary, they will want to have less-performing players, ensuring more reward for themselves.

In effect, they want lower geared people so they can grab most of the rewards? One person did 50% of the DPS and so get 50% of the rewards. You really think this is a good idea?

Personally, the best way to improve raiding for everyone is for people to be nice and courteous to everyone. Stop blaming others if the group wipes. Wipes happen. Accept it. If it did not then, the content is too easy for them and they should be doing harder content.

[Deleted]

And exatly how much time can a single group endure before disbanding? With this tactic, will the reward worth the repair costs, consumables, etc.?
Such tactic will never become universal since there is such high cost of wiping.

In expansion when gold is close to meaningless? A lot.

If you can't kill a boss, you don't deserve that kill. Do a lower difficulty instead or try to improve. With your idea improving will be irrelevant if anything can be zerged.

[Madone]

Providing incentives for people to ignore mechanics and tunnel is a bad idea.

If you believe DPS meters alone are an accurate measure of a person's contribution to killing a boss and if you believe bosses should become easier by wipes making the boss weaker vs. wipes making people learn how to improve, then LFR is the appropriate difficulty level for you until you gain more experience.

[Deleted]

That sounds even a bigger help than the buffing players in LFR. Not sure if this is a good idea for normal and above because eventually it becomes a bruteforce. And I can see this being abused in combination with the "Performance". Kick almost everyone when the boss could be soloed and grab all the rewards.

Abusing can be limited quite easily i believe.

And who is to judge that performance? DPS is not always a race. If you require some players to handle specific mechanics, then their DPS will drop. Got a debuff and need to move away from the group and do nothing? Sure, but then their DPS will drop.

Giving people with higher DPS just segregate people further. Better gear = better DPS = better rewards = better gear = better DPS = better rewards = better gear etc. People that need the gear most are usually the people with the lowest gear.

As i already mentioned, measuring dps is just an example. Raid encounters aren't that complex, neither are tactics. Raid group organization is complex, but that has nothing to do with the encounters themselves. They can be measured. If they want to, they can implement a tool with varying options for performance measurement and just adjust it for each encounter.

In effect, they want lower geared people so they can grab most of the rewards? One person did 50% of the DPS and so get 50% of the rewards. You really think this is a good idea?

In reality you never run to such extremes. If you have a group where one player is pulling 50% of the overall dps, the group will not be able to even reach the boss.
In a group, able to defeat a boss in any reasonable amount of time, you will not see top-to-bottom difference higher than 5-10%.

Personally, the best way to improve raiding for everyone is for people to be nice and courteous to everyone. Stop blaming others if the group wipes. Wipes happen. Accept it. If it did not then, the content is too easy for them and they should be doing harder content.

Personally, i think that as well. But WoW community has become too aggressive and elitist to a point at which it cannot be mended.
And since it is a game where you depend so much on others to progress, i think they have to direct raid grouping and raiding in general. Else, raid participation will continue to diminish. Heck, even in expansion so focused on raiding, we see how Mythic gets less than 5% total completion, Heroic less than 20% and so forth.