Cataclysm Screenshots, Blue posts

Cirque

I read all of that, and I agree with you. I some times feel that Blizzard has forgoten that challanges are fun too, and with out failure, there are no challanges.

Originally Posted by hx9

Honestly, let's look at some current content where they admit to messing up and see just how hard 10 vs. 25 can be.

The first thing that comes to mind is unbound plague. In 10 man, unbound plague is amazingly difficult to control because 1 minute across 10 people requires nearly everyone to participate. In 25 man, this isn't the case, with many guilds opting to just let it bounce around in melee for over half its duration. By contrast on the same fight, malleable goo is much harder to deal with in 25 man as well as the two oozes each needing individual attackers. Putricide is the perfect example of a fight which is balanced for difficulty for both 10 and 25 man raids, short of the obvious DPS requirement differences that exist because of how raiding is supposed to work now.

Let's look at blood queen. 10 vs. 25 may seem like 10 man is easier at first, and you're probably right. You have much more room to spread out across the room for the air phase splash damage, there is less a chanse at dropping the "purple poop" on other players and you only need to link 2 people. The air phases are two minutes apart instead of 1.5 minutes, allowing WotF, Lichborne, PvP trinkets, EMFH and fear wards to be used much more easily.

So what could happen in 10 man to make it more difficult? Howabout 3 air phases instead of 2 in order to make biting more dangerous? What about still having 3 people link instead of two, causing more motion to be necessary? Two people with the "purple poop" to fill up that space that would otherwise be occupied by 25 people? An added ability? 10 man could just as easily have been upped in difficulty, and in a few cases without really adjusting the fight mechanics.

But then you will say, 25 vs. 10... why do 25 at all? Well, the reward will be greater in some way, but not so much that you are theoretically "obligated" to do 25s over 10s. The feel will be much more epic. The encounters will be slightly different.

And even if nobody does 25 mans anymore, can you really be upset about that? Can you really blame people for doing the size of content they want to do? And besides... if there are more people out there like you and I who want to do the 25 instead of the 10, you're damn well sure that we'll not only find the people to make it happen, but we'll have fun doing it.

25s will not happen. They (Blizz) just don't want to shutdown anything that players tag as fun. It's a recent trend of Blizz but I think a good one. So, 25s won't be cut out, but they definetely won't be mainstream anymore.

You mentioned BQL encounter. Yes it's easy, if you gear your raid from 25s in 264/277 gear. If you run exclusively 10s you won't cut down BQL in 251 so easy. (From melee (I play one) perspective for example there's no 10 man trinket that holds a feint candle to DBW, even normal one.)

Anyway 10 mans are fun. Karazhan was a major success right after the classic's 40s hegemony. Peeps enjoyed Kara even in the T6 tier. I for one welcome our new 10 mans overlords. With that said I'm in a guild that is after server firsts in this expansion, so if enough of us want to continue as 25 man raiding guild I will happily stay. ^^

Vashj'ir looks pretty awesome

Originally Posted by Zookz25

Oh, I get it.

But that's not so much a blizzard issue, as it is a issue with the guild, is it not?

If most of your guild is cool with just saying "No one can ever show up, let's just do 10-mans." Then that's of course what's going to happen.

The 25-mans are there for people who like to a 25-man, if people aren't willing to show up for 25-mans, they obviously don't want to do 25-mans.

Blizzard is now giving players the choice to raid with 9 other people, or 24 other people; if all of those 9 or 24 people aren't on board and pumped for raids, it's not going to happen.

Heck, last raid night we were missing about half of the raid because no one cares for ICC anymore. Even if it was only a 10 person guild, if only half of the raid cares (5 people), we still aren't going.

25-man guilds will have the upper-hand here, because if only half of the raid comes, you can still go via 10-man, where is the lose here? I only see win for both 25-man and 10-man groups. 25-mans have a viable fallback plan if people don't show, and 10-man guilds can raid competitively.

This kind of organization has nothing to do with which (10-man or 25-man) will be more difficult, which is what the min/maxing, or efficiency is about. Nor does this show that 25-mans will be less viable than 10-mans, it's all on your guilds preference. Note how I say guild, yes, everyone needs to be wanting to same thing (10 or 25-man) or it's not going to happen; a house divided anyone?

As a last added note: If you real feel that passionate about raiding in a 25-man guild, you should most likely try and find one that is staying as a 25-man guild. If you would rather min/max, you will have to wait and find out whether the 10-man or 25-man version of the raid will be easier.

(please tell me someone gets what I'm talking about, right? lol)

Finally, some wisdom.

---------- Post added 06-16-2010 at 10:26 PM ----------

Originally Posted by LeperHerring

It's because I have this thing called a "brain" capable of reasoning and analyzing things. I don't need to get stabbed in the face to know that getting stabbed in the face would hurt...

Why do you ask questions that are in no way related to what I wrote?

People don't pick raids based on the number of people they want in the raid. There is a million things that go into that decision such as what rewards it offers and how much organizational work is required. All things considered to me it seems 25 man raiding is becoming obsolete in Cata.

On the same token, just because you say it repeatedly, page after page, doesn't make you right either. Your opinion is uninformed or if it's not, give us some data.

The questions seemed unrelated because you're set in your viewpoint and unwilling to consider Blizzard may be on to something.

If I concede your point about rewards and organizational work, then again you prove the point out. The amount of loot and some other things (I can't remember the details (gold? points?)) may be greater in 25man than 10man. The organizational work for 25man will still be there. Ergo, if someone wants to make decisions on rewards and org work, they can STILL CHOOSE 25man over 10man. ZOMG. But based upon your shrieking, I assume you'll do 10mans because 25s are "dead".

I think the difference in our opinion lies in that I don't believe Blizzard would make a change like this without a LOT of thought and hard data.

xoxo

I think everyone understands that Blizzard intends to make 10s and 25s equally difficult. What is unclear to me, however, is which difficulties they intend to chose. Currently we have four different levels of difficulty:

10: mouth-breathing face-roll easy to moderate, mostly the former
25: pretty easy to moderately hard, mostly the former
10H: moderate to very hard
25H: hard to extremely hard

Once we drop to two difficulty levels, which two will it be? Is there going to be a wider span of difficulties as one progresses through each raid tier, such that some bosses will indeed be faceroll easy, and some pretty tough (in regular mode), while in heroic, bosses in the same tier will start moderately hard and get crazy by the end? Or can we expect nothing but faceroll for the first couple of tiers?

All the examples above can be solved easy for balancing in more then one way. I can give you one right now: increase the range of the ability for 10man so people have to spread out more and calculate number of tombs / player based on 10 / 25s.

/facepalm

There are just a ton of mechanics that simply cannot be balanced to be equally challenging for 10 and 25 players. Only some examples (and something that YOU didn´t think of...):

• Spreading out a 10-player raid like a 25-player raid means having some people NOT in healing range since you only got 2 or 3 healers instead of 6 or 7 and they can´t cover the same space.
• In fights with a lot of adds+AoEing them (e.h. Anub'arak heroic) it is completely easy with up to two adds for every tank. As soon as there are more, you must have a hunter and/or rogue.
• You can´t tune the fights as close. Anub'arak heroic was nearly impossible to kill with 226er Gear for a Caster-Group until you started gearing up, but it was a walk in the park for every melee-zerg. A fight like Vezax would be the opposite: way easier with a lot of ranged rather than melees.
• 10-man is just much more critical setup-wise. Arthas is basically impossible without a (disc-)priest. Sartharion3D (10 man) was impossible with Warrior/Paladin + Druid/Shaman healer while a DK as an MT was "win" (Druid was okay) and Priest/Paladin could heal it (and had CDs for the MT).

In order to make them equally "difficult" you will have to make them more simple and they will be easier. And this doesn´t even take into account that it is always harder to
find
organize
coordinate
10 good players than to do it with 25.

And stop the BS about "people do what they like best, so let them if they prefer 10-mans". People LOVE the 2-year old heroics, do they? Ah, thats why everybody runs them endlessly. People LOVE to only see the first 4 bosses of ICC, right? Thats why they are farming them in PUGs. 99% of the people do what is most efficient...because it would be stupid not to.

Also, there WON´T be more loot. They already said that. There will perhaps be more badges (that have a weekly cap that is probably wihtin reach even for 10-man raiders since there should be no advantages for people just playing "more" than others...most likely "weekly + 10 man + dailies = cap") and more gold. Wtf? Who needs gold?

I'd love to raid 25's, but I don't have the time. I have time for 10s, but I want the gear from the 25s.

I DONT SEE ANY PROBLEM.

Originally Posted by Tharkkun

So are you suggesting you want to pay additional $$$$ to be able to access harder content above and beyond what the average subscriber pays? Good idea.

No, i'm saying they shouldnt dumb things down to the level of the people who have the least time to play the game. When a guy in a wheelchair can't go up stairs you don't take the stairs away you give them a ramp to get up.

---------- Post added 06-16-2010 at 09:06 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Malthurius

To the people saying that 25-mans will die, and everyone will go to 10-mans because they are easier are forgetting that more gear PER PERSON will drop from the 25-man raids making them more attractive if you can get the people.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Amount of gear in 10/25-Man Raids
The amount of gear in the 25 person raids will be roughly equivalent on per-person basis to the 10 person raids.

So basically there will be no real incentive (gear-wise at least) to run 25 man raids.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

There are rewards like badges/gold for the additional coordination involved, but we are trying to avoid having gear be the reason that one style is better than the other.

So no, people won't get more gear for 25 mans, they might get a few extra badges that are useless after a couple of months (i have almost 600 frost badges rotting away) and maybe some extra gold (which i already have over 250k of)

I have yet to see a post talking about the likeliness of guild breakdown due to this change. I, as a guild mater, put lots of time managing my guild. I know many of my guild members are great players however many join and continue to stay largely because of the glory of being the best guild on our server, and the exclusive chance to BiS items. Now, Blizzard is trying to remove both distinguishing factors, and I am deeply concerned.

Of course I am going to do everything to keep them doing 25man raids. However, if the majority opt to 10man, or even if a few core raiders just want to run instances with each other, my guild will face serious issues, so does lots of other guilds. What I can foresee is lots of guild/server hopping (Reminder: to discourage guild hopping is the very excuse Blizzard use to remove the guild leveling tree.). This is quite disrespectful to people who put in real efforts managing their guilds.

On the other hand, lets forget about those guilds that are farming Heroic ICC, they are good at the game but they don't bring more revenue to Blizzard than average players, including those who run 10s and pugs. Since it will be easier for average players to run 10s, a reasonable assumption is that each of those 10s team will require 2 tanks and 2-3 healers. Now comes the problem: do tanks and healers constitute 40-50% of the WoW population? Very unlikely. So, how many people will lose their only chance per week to those Cata raids? What would they do after they level to 85 only to find that NO RAID WANT THEM? Frustrating. Then probably followed by massive subscription cancellation.

Lots of posts above that favor 10s are self-centered. They may be capable players but they just want to pick the fruits without spending time to cultivate. During my career as a guild master, I have met many different people. What I found out is that if you put in time, no one is "FUBAR". To me, depriving someone's chance to grow is selfish.

As a tank/healer, I am not worried about myself. I can pick raids. But I am worried for those who cannot get easy raid invites. Having single lockout and equal loot in 10s and 25s is not necessarily good news to you. It could mean no chance to raid, therefore no loot to roll on. Think twice.

Originally Posted by Ogemaniac

10: mouth-breathing face-roll easy to moderate, mostly the former
25: pretty easy to moderately hard, mostly the former
10H: moderate to very hard
25H: hard to extremely hard

This is where Blizzard with more data than you and me come in handy...cuz those 4 above I see them like :

10: Moderate encounters to a (currently) 10m geared player.
25: Mostly easy to moderate encounters given the number of players.
10H: Hard to Very Hard
25H: Moderately Hard to Very Hard

@adilina:

Call me stupid or whatever, but isn't what you're describing just BC raiding, with a 10 man option?

On the same note, BC raiding was either very good to you or very bad. Many players were locked out of t5 and above content simply based on the problem of finding people competent enough to complete the content (whether it was because of server, raid times, classes available, etc)and therefore got to play only about 30% of the raid content available in that expansion. I know some people will look at this and say "well that just separated the good people from the bads". Having more patience (and hence more time to work through content) does not make you better.

Moving on, I don't see why you should worry if you continue to be "the best guild on the server". What does that have to do with doing 10s or 25s? You'll still have people with the same skill level, still have people who have BiS gear and still have the prestige of clearing the highest level of content. How're you no longer the best guild on the server?

Lastly, if you believe that people who play this game aren't selfish, you're sincerely naive. I'm not saying everyone is a greedy prick/whore, but you play this game for YOUR benefit, first and foremost. You're working with other people toward a common goal, yes, but you're still looking to better your toon, not other people's. How many times do you hear of people complaining about how guilds (25s mostly) deal with loot and loot distribution. This is the core of selfishness in this game: everyone wants the best loot for themselves, regardless of whether or not giving it to someone else would help the guild more and therefore cause more boss kills (and loot) in the future. If you have found 24 other people who do not feel this way on any level, you deserve a medal my friend.

25 mans will die simply because of these people who say "Blizz is ruining 25 mans, they're dead". Once the general population of WoW hears this more and more will believe it and they'll die. I wish they didn't die... But if these idiots keep up this charade they will die.

Originally Posted by Canbie;8130887@

Moving on, I don't see why you should worry if you continue to be "the best guild on the server". What does that have to do with doing 10s or 25s?

Because getting 10 people to do something right always takes less time then getting 25 people to do so. So if you still want to be the best on the server (considering the game will only have 1 achievement for it) you will do 10 man's.

Originally Posted by Canbie;8130887@

Lastly, if you believe that people who play this game aren't selfish, you're sincerely naive. I'm not saying everyone is a greedy prick/whore, but you play this game for YOUR benefit, first and foremost. You're working with other people toward a common goal, yes, but you're still looking to better your toon, not other people's. How many times do you hear of people complaining about how guilds (25s mostly) deal with loot and loot distribution. This is the core of selfishness in this game: everyone wants the best loot for themselves, regardless of whether or not giving it to someone else would help the guild more and therefore cause more boss kills (and loot) in the future. If you have found 24 other people who do not feel this way on any level, you deserve a medal my friend.

You are very right, no matter what people say being different and special is what everyone strives for and thus, that will come in 10 mans in an overwhelmingly large portion of the time. Sure maybe guilds like Paragon and a few others that are light years ahead of everyone else can still beat a good 10 man group to achievements, but a lot of the realm titles will end up going to 10 man groups in most cases.

Every guild has loot drama every once in a while, but for the top guilds it's not a big issue because if someone quits you usually have a large list of people applying to get in, where it hurts is in the world 5000 ranked guilds that have trouble finding people that are even close to being competent without the "i'll show up to raids after things are easily farmed" and "once i have the items i want i'll mysteriously disappear till the next tier is out" mentalities.

Remember when they got rid of 40 man raids? Remember how many people thought that was going to destroy raiding in WoW? No you say? Well that would make sense because most people hated 40 mans. The system was bad and kept a lot of people from progressing beyond BWL.

Anyways in case you haven't noticed 25 man raid progression is not very good in Wrath, if you don't have a friend in a more elite guild or you don't kiss enough a$$ to get into one of those guilds you're not getting far into 25 mans.

In fact I'd bet hard cash that most of you people complaining are delusional and don't even realize your 25 man raid progression has not been very good at all.

Please stop the QQ! I love the fact that blizzard is making it possible for 10man raids to get the same gear as 25man. Hopefully 10mans will drop the same legendarys as well.
The thing you guys dont think about is back in the days where epics were really hard to get because we had 40man rolling for items, lets say 30ppl of those actually played (if even that).
And now see what this made to wow? Alot of people are playing the game!
Atm I killed LK 25 HC and LK 10 HC and I'm not in one of those 25man guilds that has 5-10 retards in the raid anymore but alot of guilds do have those issues. If blizzard was tuning LK10HC to be done with ICC25HC-gear and not Icc10-gear the encounter would be as hard as 25man.
I did "of the Nightfall" with naxxgear and the 25man version, and no I didnt zerg it. And imo the 10man was alot harder.
Imo stop the whining and get your IRL friends back online and have some fun doing everything the game has to offer with the people you like. (and not group 4-5, who fails)

And to all you world first guys out there. 25man will still be there for you, and people will count 10man world first and 25man world first, instead of just 25.

Good luck raiding 10mans and remember again - Raiding with 10 cool awesome friends is alot more fun then having to wait for the dude who needs to help his grandma every 10mins (imo)

Originally Posted by Lumocolor

No, i'm saying they shouldnt dumb things down to the level of the people who have the least time to play the game. When a guy in a wheelchair can't go up stairs you don't take the stairs away you give them a ramp to get up.

---------- Post added 06-16-2010 at 09:06 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Amount of gear in 10/25-Man Raids
The amount of gear in the 25 person raids will be roughly equivalent on per-person basis to the 10 person raids.

So basically there will be no real incentive (gear-wise at least) to run 25 man raids.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

There are rewards like badges/gold for the additional coordination involved, but we are trying to avoid having gear be the reason that one style is better than the other.

So no, people won't get more gear for 25 mans, they might get a few extra badges that are useless after a couple of months (i have almost 600 frost badges rotting away) and maybe some extra gold (which i already have over 250k of)

And yes, there is still gear reasons to do 25-mans. More badges = more gear. More gear drops per-person = more chances to get the weapon you want. And not everyone has that much gold or that many badges, and if you're going to use your own situations to defend your side, you're a little bit self-centered imo.

Originally Posted by iluwen_de

Spreading out a 10-player raid like a 25-player raid means having some people NOT in healing range since you only got 2 or 3 healers instead of 6 or 7 and they can´t cover the same space.

I'm sorry but if anywhere close to a 3rd of your raid is composed entirely of heals YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG/SUCK.

---------- Post added 06-16-2010 at 09:15 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Malthurius

And yes, there is still gear reasons to do 25-mans. More badges = more gear. More gear drops per-person = more chances to get the weapon you want. And not everyone has that much gold, and if you're going to use your own situations to defend your side, you're a little bit self-centered imo.

No you're wrong about the badge thing, it's not really an incentive to run 25 mans since there is going to be a badge cap per week which anyone can reach via running heroics and on the other hand people don't understand what they're doing with gear at all.

Lets simplify things: 10 and 25 man raids will drop gear of around the same item level (NOTE THEY DIDN'T EVEN SAY THEY HAVE THE EXACT SAME LOOT TABLES), but 25 man raids will drop more gear per boss.

Simple as that.

Only thing I'd be worried about is how this is going to affect hardmodes.

Originally Posted by Bucky Mclachlan

I'm sorry but if anywhere close to a 3rd of your raid is composed entirely of heals YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG/SUCK.

---------- Post added 06-16-2010 at 09:15 PM ----------


(NOTE THEY DIDN'T EVEN SAY THEY HAVE THE EXACT SAME LOOT TABLES)

Yes they did say that, not in this post tho.

Originally Posted by Bucky Mclachlan

Lets simplify things: 10 and 25 man raids will drop gear of around the same item level (NOTE THEY DIDN'T EVEN SAY THEY HAVE THE EXACT SAME LOOT TABLES), but 25 man raids will drop more gear per boss.

Simple as that.

Will people stop saying that??

It's right there in blue on black

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Amount of gear in 10/25-Man Raids
The amount of gear in the 25 person raids will be roughly equivalent on per-person basis to the 10 person raids.

That doesn't mean more, it means it will be the same.

---------- Post added 06-17-2010 at 12:41 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Malthurius

And yes, there is still gear reasons to do 25-mans. More badges = more gear. More gear drops per-person = more chances to get the weapon you want. And not everyone has that much gold or that many badges, and if you're going to use your own situations to defend your side, you're a little bit self-centered imo.

Yes, i play to be the best i can be. I also carry a score card when i play golf. I do everything in life to be as good as i can, even if i'm bad at something i try to get better.

We'll see where the game ends up in 6 months when the expansion comes out, they've already changed most of the things they talked about at blizzcon last year, so there is still plenty of time for them to hopefully make more changes.

Originally Posted by Lumocolor

Will people stop saying that??

It's right there in blue on black

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Amount of gear in 10/25-Man Raids
The amount of gear in the 25 person raids will be roughly equivalent on per-person basis to the 10 person raids.

That doesn't mean more, it means it will be the same.

---------- Post added 06-17-2010 at 12:41 AM ----------



Yes, i play to be the best i can be. I also carry a score card when i play golf. I do everything in life to be as good as i can, even if i'm bad at something i try to get better.

We'll see where the game ends up in 6 months when the expansion comes out, they've already changed most of the things they talked about at blizzcon last year, so there is still plenty of time for them to hopefully make more changes.

Fair enough. I have enough faith in Blizzard to not break 25 or 10-man raiding.