Does raiding need dramatically reviewed?

[antelope591]

The game's already dying but people want to remove mythic raiding which is one of the only things still keeping people interested in WoW. Man, Blizz should hire the genius minds on MMO-C, some you guys would make some great game designers.

[micwini]

I don't want them to change anything. Raiding could use improvements, but when they try improving something, it gets worse most of the time. Let's just play it safe and don't change anything.

[Athalon]

i'm only playing for mythic raiding. If blizzard removes that, can count with my unsub xD

[La]

IMO raiding mythic these days is pointless outside of the challenge with a few friends. I'd like to see mythic axed and heroic/normal tuned to be a tad harder (still overall more easy than mythic) This would allow more people to see top content while still posing a challenge. It would also open it to a flexible system not set a 20man team giving guilds on dead realms or factions a chance of staying together throughout the summer, christmas and end of expan period. With content being a little more easy it would overall be more fun i think as you could play multiple toons to keep things more interesting rather than focusing on 1.

Just kind of seems pointless tuning a difficulty for the 1%, spend the cash/time on other content for the 99%. Oh and remove raid level rewards from outside of m+/raiding. No need for a weekly chest and quest reward this just makes the top content less relevant over time.

The thing is, people who design boss encounters are very unique in that the gaming industry doesn't really have many places they can do that, or require that sort of thing. Add onto that the fact that "tuning" isn't all that difficult, the only difficult part is getting is just right, which minor nerfs they make later to make it a bit more accessible to the lower end raiders later. Largely tuning amounts to "How much dps/hps will people do in x ilvl? Boost boss hp and spell abilities accordingly. If tuning raids was that difficult, you can bet a lazy company like Blizzard would not have so many difficulties.

If you asked me I think that Blizzard has a problem across all their games where they try to make their game appeal to everyone, which in turn makes the game enjoyed fully by no one.

[Eternal2u]

I'm not a top 1000 raider, that being said mythic and pushing for cutting edge is the entire reason i play WoW.

If mythic was removed to just have the flexible raids like heroic/normal is now i would quit the game. hard stop.

And there are a fuckton more people like me than you account for. This game is very unique in there is a wide audience that enjoys different aspects of the game.

You have the transmog crowd,
The m+ crowd
The levelers
The auction and gold making people
and then the raiding scene.

the raiding and m+ kind of combines but alot of raiders just do their weekly 10 or whatever it is that season/expansion to get their max gear in their cache to enable a higher raiding ilvl. Same goes for m+ players but not as regular. alot of m+ players just do m+ and dabble in raiding for the gear but not in a real progression sense as far as ive seen.

[NihilSustinet]

What do you mean with that?
MoP introduced Mythic - hardcore raiders got their own goddamn catering table. The mode that was designed for them.
WoD served raiders and it was pretty much the only content it provided
In Legion Blizzard made hardcore raiding even more challenging - throughput legendaries and AP talents that were flat throughput boosts.
In BFA the best Azerite traits are from raids.

Before MOP, ALL raiding was mythic (though they generally progressed in difficulty of the course of expansions) so adding difficulty levels was catering to casuals who wants the benefits of raiding without putting in the effort.
WoD lacked content in general.. i dont see how this favors raiders.
Legion - artifacts and weapons scalign through ap were raid-level egar accessed without raiding. also the even more beefed up WF/TF system made it so you could even get mythic level raid gear without ever touching mythic. my cousin was in a guild struggling to clear normal NH while i was 5/10M NH, and our i was maybe 5 ilevels higher than him. This was while I was 5/10M, and wf/tf rolls on my heroic gear made it so that i was only halfway through the instance and there were no drops that i needed from the entire mythic raid, unless they also rolled WF/TF.
BFA - WF/TF system still in place, no more master loot, best trinkets were not from raids, and even if its true thet the best azerite traits are form raids (which i dont really agree with).. thats a pretty minor benefit to raiding, and you dont even need to mythic raid to get them, so i dont really see how its relevant.

[GreenJesus]

I just hate how Blizzard makes the first boss of mythic a literal loot rain (taloc and now champions). We walked in to Champion, ignored the adds, tunneled on boss and just used some healing cooldown for the "big" boss hammer down and that was it the boss plopped over. 2 pulls including the first pull where the tank DC'd.

The boss was undertuned so badly we literally didn't have to do any of the mechanics on the first week of the raid being out.

I get they want bad players to try out mythic and be like "woah I killed a mythic boss we're a progression guild now!" But it's pretty pathetic.

[Relapses]

My quick and easy thoughts on raid design:

• Too many difficulties. Remove Normal as its mostly redundant
• Remove Titanforging because it's fucking stupid
• Bring back the ability to swap between Heroic and Mythic within the same instance

[Jikate-Stormrage]

I can't say I agree, I'd love to see them moving opposite direction and promoting/making features for smaller communities - but I don't think my opinion matters very much or I don't think it would even be very successful in todays gaming environment - but I'm an old dinosaur and I think guilds make much more sense than 2M randos being toxic.

I totally understand why Blizzard is pushing this tough.

I wholeheartedly agree with your opinion about supporting guild communities, but sadly after they chose to implement the community feature instead of fixing the guild system; I kind of saw the writing on the wall. With proper balancing they could easily support smaller raid sizes for mythic. I don’t mind if they incentivize 20 man slightly more, however they would choose to do that. So long as it kept the current World first race intact for the 20 mans, and allow the smaller sizes their increased difficulty. Many of the problems in wrath were strictly balance issues, but I don’t believe they are insurmountable.

Sadly, I don’t see them changing their tune. Yet there are plenty of guilds who clear heroic rather fast, but simply cannot recruit enough to transition to Mythic because of the turnover happening in Mythic raiding since legion. People rather go to established Mythic guilds instead of heroic guilds building towards Mythic. That’s only natural of course, but the (I would say large) need for heroic guilds clearing content quickly for a step in difficulty... Blizzard should be churning trying to fill that gap.

[Pua]

What do you mean it doesn't please the minority it's aimed at? I'm enjoying it a lot.

My apologies, but this is why I'm not going to respond to much of your post, unless it dramatically improves.

This shows that you've just don't understand the most basic point made, so that you can argue about how great a time you're having. The comment you're whinging about isn't aimed at you, and that's obvious in the OP.

The reason multiple difficulties exist is exactly to avoid the best players getting bored because it's too easy and the worse players being annoyed because it's too hard.

The game (and by this, I mean any game) should be designed with a vision in mind, one that designers want a group of players to join up with and appreciate. That's how World of Warcraft was built. Ion Hazzikostas' recent commentary suggests that Blizzard are now trying to create a Warcraft that will make the smallest groups of people happy en mass, something that highlights the fact that he blatantly misunderstands how pleasure fundamentally works.

People want to be inspired by things they love. Games that develop for its players to be generally amused by things that lack depth will see them play for a short term before looking for something else.

This is why my two outcomes makes sense, something you've drastically misunderstood because you think it's talking about an entire raiding community and not the extremely competitive one that the entire post is about. Blizzard either causes outcome one by not trying to increase Mythic difficulty, or they increase outcome two by spiking it once more.

I literally have no idea what you think this would accomplish other than getting a lot more people to quit. There are a lot of raids that enjoy progressing through normal. There are a lot of raids that enjoy progressing through heroic. There are a lot of raids that enjoy progressing through mythic. You would be screwing them all.

Again, you've misunderstood.

Please refer to the upper commentary in this thread.

[deenman]

Having bosses do random and more pvp-like actions would destroy every guild that isnt top,my guild always clears mythic,but we still have many people fail multiple times at mecanics that....we know are coming,we are told they are coming,we know how they come and where,and we still fail,imagine that now being random.....RIP

[kumarshah]

Yes, make bosses have simpler abilities and mechanics. The number of mechanics you have to learn for a boss fight is insane and tiring.

[FelPlague]

For the system to be best, everyone should be able to clear most if not all of mythic by the final week, you should be seeing about atleast 30-40% of the playerbase finishing the final boss. The way to do this is a slow nerf, the azerite trait in uldir did that, but in a bad way.
azerite and gear does this, but its not enough. the reward should be "i did this then!" not "I DID THIS!'
Why the mage tower was such a success, at the end of the expansion it was pretty easy to do them, i did a ton on alts just for fun that were pretty much fresh max levels and i sucked at playing. and it was fun.

but i no where got them ANYWHERE near the best who got it day 1.
i got the item, but the people who got it early got the bragging rights...

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Before MOP, ALL raiding was mythic (though they generally progressed in difficulty of the course of expansions) so adding difficulty levels was catering to casuals who wants the benefits of raiding without putting in the effort.
WoD lacked content in general.. i dont see how this favors raiders.
Legion - artifacts and weapons scalign through ap were raid-level egar accessed without raiding. also the even more beefed up WF/TF system made it so you could even get mythic level raid gear without ever touching mythic. my cousin was in a guild struggling to clear normal NH while i was 5/10M NH, and our i was maybe 5 ilevels higher than him. This was while I was 5/10M, and wf/tf rolls on my heroic gear made it so that i was only halfway through the instance and there were no drops that i needed from the entire mythic raid, unless they also rolled WF/TF.
BFA - WF/TF system still in place, no more master loot, best trinkets were not from raids, and even if its true thet the best azerite traits are form raids (which i dont really agree with).. thats a pretty minor benefit to raiding, and you dont even need to mythic raid to get them, so i dont really see how its relevant.

uhh what? no, you seem to forget both wotlk and cata had normal and heroic, so no all raiding was not "mythic"

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Having bosses do random and more pvp-like actions would destroy every guild that isnt top,my guild always clears mythic,but we still have many people fail multiple times at mecanics that....we know are coming,we are told they are coming,we know how they come and where,and we still fail,imagine that now being random.....RIP

Random works in pvp because the abilities are not as important. but if suddenly bosses started doing random orders then it would be impossible without good luck.

for it to be random it needs to be less important.
a pvper cannot cast an ability that drags people in and instant kills them, while having just done an abiliy that forced them to get close.
but in pvp with random that could happen. where normally there is a fair bit of time between those kinds of things.

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Yes, make bosses have simpler abilities and mechanics. The number of mechanics you have to learn for a boss fight is insane and tiring.

really they actyually are not that bad on normal, and some on heroic, but mythic is just... way too much.

[Alphatorg]

This is certainly one of the things that could be done to change raiding.
The "action exhaustion/attrition" in mythic raids is tough to deal with on top of the crazy requirements (splits, alts etc) that aiming towards the top require.

Part of the reason is the addon API. It should be severely limited. DBM is a "must have" raiding addon, even in lower difficulty levels these days. It's silly. Top guilds have people writing their auras/DBM timers on PTR, in preparation to the tier. Frequent comments on kill streams and youtube videos is "what's that aura/addon?", people expect there to be a DBM timer or aura for them to download for every boss move - because the addons are able so provide to much extra information, Blizzard has to design the encounters with this in mind.

They should try to de-escalate this and nerf the API in raid instances (all instances).

Split raids really aren't a huge issue. As a rule of thumb: WF challengers do the truly degenerate stuff, guilds that aim for top ten require ~2 alts, the rest of the top 100 want one alt. Below that split raiding isn't much of a thing. And the problem with 1 or 2 alts isn't the raiding itself, but the casual player retention scam that is WQ and AP grind.

You point boss mods out as a bad thing, but they actually allow/force Blizzard to implement new and challenging mechanics. It's like letting students use calculators in maths tests. The test doesn't become easier, because the teacher now presents deeper problems.

Second part of this is PTR testing. If you're a "serious" mythic guild, you need to do PTR. That's where you figure out mechanics and build your strats. Almost all raids have now written guides and even step by step video guides released before the actual raid goes live.

If you're raiding lower difficulty levels you're expected to have watched the videos and read the guides - you're expected to know the fights before you step into the instance for the first time.

Blizzard should increase their investments in internal testing and not rely solely on crowd sourced bug testing. Every time they try, the raid/boss falls apart, because they've not done enough testing internally. The famous "Blizzard polish" is certainly not visible in their internal tests.

If they were able to to test internally, they could keep the raid parts encrypted in the patch files until release and then everyone could start discovering how it works an building strats - combined with less addons, it wouldn't always have to be a 20-man 15 minute riverdance number.

It's not like PTR tests allow you to progress through the whole raid, much less the mythic/final versions. You get a glimpse of a WIP encounter. Which allows you to make educated guesses, but not whole strategies.
I don't see the point of private tests either. The more players test an encounter the higher chance the chance of finding bugs becomes. More minds involved also give you a higher chance of discovering cheese strats or exploits. I'm also not sure how good an internal raid testing team would actually be skill-wise.
And regarding guides: no matter if testing is private or public people will create guides and once those guides are released people will expect players to study them.

[Khallid]

The game (and by this, I mean any game) should be designed with a vision in mind, one that designers want a group of players to join up with and appreciate. That's how World of Warcraft was built. Ion Hazzikostas' recent commentary suggests that Blizzard are now trying to create a Warcraft that will make the smallest groups of people happy en mass, something that highlights the fact that he blatantly misunderstands how pleasure fundamentally works.

People want to be inspired by things they love. Games that develop for its players to be generally amused by things that lack depth will see them play for a short term before looking for something else.

This is why my two outcomes makes sense, something you've drastically misunderstood because you think it's talking about an entire raiding community and not the extremely competitive one that the entire post is about. Blizzard either causes outcome one by not trying to increase Mythic difficulty, or they increase outcome two by spiking it once more.

Well, I don't really disagree with your premise of designing a game with vision. I just don't see why the difficulty scales currently in this game would lead to lack of depth or screwing up the players. It seems like you're jumping to conclusions to fit your narrative. Your question was "what the designers want their raid difficulties to achieve". I think the correct answer to that is to allow players of different skill levels to enjoy the game. People will segregate themselves into the difficulty they enjoy the most.

You stated that the game would be better by having only two settings, but you didn't introduce an argument to explain why that would be the case. What you wrote was not an argument. You just said "it would improve so many problems". How? That's why I don't find your conclusion convincing. You skipped all the explanation needed to make your case.

You stated that competitive players end up finding the game too easy or the amount of players doing the hardest content would end up reducing even more. Let me apologize for reading it wrong, since this part of the argument is only confined to that section of the players.

So for scenario 1 how do you define what is "too easy"? If you truly master the game it makes perfect sense that you should be able to defeat all the obstacles available. Therefore "too easy" is not a trivial concept for this argument. It seems to me like you're assuming that master-level players require a higher difficulty than what currently exists, otherwise they would be happy with the game difficulty right now.

And for scenario 2 how do you define what is an acceptable percentage of the playerbase? If you want to argue exclusively about competitive players, and the competitive scene focuses on the race like an esport, it really doesn't matter how small the percentage is. The race only needs two teams to be a race. There's more to argue if we talk about what percentage of the playerbase plays mythic difficulty, but if you constrain it to only the competitive race, the difficulty can ramp up as high as it's necessary for the race. That's why the last mythic bosses get nerfed shortly after the race is over. Their difficulty is exceptionally higher only for the race, not for the rest of us. Tweaking a few numbers to make a boss extremely hard doesn't classify as "more content", which is why I said before there's no additional content being designed exclusively for them. So what is the issue?

[Pua]

You stated that the game would be better by having only two settings, but you didn't introduce an argument to explain why that would be the case.

Because my concept retains the four difficulties that currently exist. The best example, ultimately, is Ulduar; a single raid, with no different difficulty settings, managed to show three difficulties throughout. Several bosses were tuned to the current "Normal" setting, several more served the current "Heroic", and the final bosses (the full Yogg-Saron without help from the Keepers, and Algalon the Observer) were "Mythic" with an extremely small percentage rate.

What made this better was that you could still complete a single instance raid of three difficulties, without beating the Mythic ones, and then working on them later in the expansion with better gear so that the content was still relevant. Interestingly enough, I'm one of those who would continue to support an LFR version to this, specifically for those who would love to see a raid, or need to complete quests, but can't commit to a raiding schedule.

This system solves so many issues, and all it would lose would be a tiny percentage of competitive people who think being one of a couple-hundred folk is actually interesting.

So for scenario 1 how do you define what is "too easy"?

Personally, I can't necessarily provide it because it's vastly different for me.

I'm talking about those players at the top who, from both of the most competitive groups, have made several complaints about this patch because several bosses, with lower item levels and lower tactics, still fell over after a few hours. That's a starting outcome. But you go on to reference one of the key aspects, namely what happens to those who truly master the game? Well, what Blizzard have done is continually increase the difficulty of content in order to keep an increasingly shrinking population happy, without properly appreciating what it does to those who may want to participate but haven't the experience.

Because let's be clear: what makes a person a "master" is a heavy commitment of time.

You should remember that those killing Classic bosses were dealing with huge group issues, a time commitment before even entering a raid, and a severely different development of class capabilities.

And for scenario 2 how do you define what is an acceptable percentage of the playerbase?

Anything that requires time and effort to develop should never be aimed at a laughable minority, such as the competitive raid group. Not only does it deal with practically nobody in your entire player base, it also ends up excluding new players who may want to participate. You yourself cite a number of issues that are a design-related waste of time that doesn't actually deal with any of the meaningful playerbase.

Sco and <Method> have been competitively raiding for at least a full decade, and contributed next to nothing to anyone else. All of the evidence (though not wonderfully supplied) has indicated that PvE competition is extremely uninteresting.

That alone is enough of an argument to conclude that giving yourself needless work, like nerfing encounters that are originally aimed at experts that interest nobody, should be buried.

A bit like the entire approach to raiding design and gearing, as things stand, with idiotic Hazzikostas in charge.

[Alphatorg]

All I'm gathering from your post is that you're salty about mythic raiders. Almost 5000 guilds have logged a mythic kill already. That's not a majority of the playerbase, but I'm fairly certain 100k+ players are too big a number for Blizzard to just say "fuck em". The raid assets are created for everyone, you have no idea how much further ressources are commited to mythic raiding. Neither do you have any proof that Blizzard actually follows the suggestions from Method &co, infact if you actually compare complaints and suggestions you will find it hard to support any such notion for at least Legion and BfA. And besides, if top 100 guilds think bosses like Mekka and Blockade are disappointing at ilvl 403-406 chances are weaker guilds will feel the same once they arrive there with 415+ ilvl and refined tactics.

I also don't see any logic behind putting every difficulty in the same lockout. At the moment nhc raiders get 9 BFD bosses on their proper difficulty, hc raiders get 9 bosses and mythic raiders get 9 bosses. What do you propose? Consolidate difficulties, so now nhc raiders get four bosses, hc raiders get 5 bosses and mythic raiders are just fucked because one of them once stole your candy?
Ulduar in particular was the closest we had to the current system. They just had not come up with today's difficulty switch and instead had players activate hard (read: mythic) mode manually for every boss.

[Forogil]

Having bosses do random and more pvp-like actions would destroy every guild that isnt top

I'm not sure that would be the consequence, but at least it is a bad idea.

Any boss that is too random causes problem - even if not tuned that tightly: guilds will kill it one week due to luck, and then fail to kill it the next week - or just spend a lot of time hoping for luck.

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All I'm gathering from your post is that you're salty about mythic raiders. Almost 5000 guilds have logged a mythic kill. That's not a majority of the playerbase, but I'm fairly certain 100k+ players are too big a number for Blizzard to just say "fuck em".

True, and we have already showed that OP totally ignores facts about player numbers in different difficulties (there are guilds on every stage from entering normal to mythic cutting edge - without any clear separation).

I also don't see any logic behind putting every difficulty in the same lockout. At the moment nhc raiders get 9 BFD bosses on their proper difficulty, hc raiders get 9 bosses and mythic raiders get 9 bosses. What do you propose? Consolidate difficulties, so now nhc raiders get four bosses, hc raiders get 5 bosses and mythic raiders are just fucked because one of them once stole your candy?

Agreed, having shared lockout between different difficulties just creates a mess, where people either don't bother with harder difficulties a week where they have cleared normal - or other alternatives that have similar problems.

Ulduar in particular was the closest we had to the current system. They just had not come up with today's difficulty switch and instead had players activate hard (read: mythic) mode manually for every boss.

The Ulduar system was fine, but it had two major problems: it was a real pain when pugging and someone activated the hard mode by mistake (why did you kill the heart????), and having some special switch for 9(?) bosses was fine - but I can't imagine that they would have found creative ways to make 100+ such switches.

[Pua]

All I'm gathering from your post is that you're salty about mythic raiders.

Not really.

I think "Mythic" raiders (as in, those who aim at the hardest raid content) are something that the game should look to maintain, but the reasoning should be differed and that may lead to differences in design. What I mean by that, and I'll say it because a lot of people are misunderstanding simple things, are things like this:

1. Is a difficulty minority worth designing for?
2. If so, to achieve what for the whole game?
3. If not, what should the top end achievements be?

These are just a tiny percentage of all the questions required, but my overall snag with raiding (accompanied by dungeons and class design, I should add) is that we've got a team who just wants people to do it - whether or not it's what they're actually interested in. What that creates is, essentially, a game that's so widely spread, it loses a significant amount of its depth.

Just look at what it's done across the board to class "balance" demands, gearing up, dungeon abandonment or profession design. It could be legitimately argued that those all didn't get gutted just because of raids, but it's a vastly different team that has created PvE content since Ulduar was launched and a totally different view of what the game should be was departed.

So none of this is about getting rid of Mythic raiders. If Blizzard came out and said:

Mythic raiders are the best aspect of the raiding content. As a result, we're making a new setting for Mythic raiding that will ignore Heroic completion and will only be entered by players that completed at least 75% of the previous Mythic raid.

I'd probably be confused, because it's something that would have a negative impact on a raiding majority, but I'd understand why it happened and not bother too much because it would never effect me (and nobody who wasn't a relatively serious Mythic raider).

But this community already has solid views, will argue with any suggestion to the contrary of their views, and will happily review entire arguments that are disproving what they're saying. Like the earlier poster who argued that "Normal" has been in the game before the Siege of Orgrimmer. He was blatantly wrong but, rather than simply accepting that, he changed the debate purely to a titular one rather than a functional one; as in, the one that matters. Today's Normal is a low-difficulty, flexible size raid - a concept that started in the Siege of Orgrimmar.

But just to point out why we know that the view changed toward raiding between the founder designers, and those who took up after Ulduar:

- Jeff Kaplan made the argument that raiding being exclusive was a good thing, because it made the community view the world bigger.
- Ion Hazzikostas just wants as many people raiding as he can ever get, no matter what.

Which you agree with isn't the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that these are dramatic differences in view, and shows why the game has changed so dramatically in different ways.

[NihilSustinet]

For the system to be best, everyone should be able to clear most if not all of mythic by the final week, you should be seeing about atleast 30-40% of the playerbase finishing the final boss. The way to do this is a slow nerf, the azerite trait in uldir did that, but in a bad way.
azerite and gear does this, but its not enough. the reward should be "i did this then!" not "I DID THIS!'
Why the mage tower was such a success, at the end of the expansion it was pretty easy to do them, i did a ton on alts just for fun that were pretty much fresh max levels and i sucked at playing. and it was fun.

but i no where got them ANYWHERE near the best who got it day 1.
i got the item, but the people who got it early got the bragging rights...

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uhh what? no, you seem to forget both wotlk and cata had normal and heroic, so no all raiding was not "mythic"

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Random works in pvp because the abilities are not as important. but if suddenly bosses started doing random orders then it would be impossible without good luck.

for it to be random it needs to be less important.
a pvper cannot cast an ability that drags people in and instant kills them, while having just done an abiliy that forced them to get close.
but in pvp with random that could happen. where normally there is a fair bit of time between those kinds of things.

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really they actyually are not that bad on normal, and some on heroic, but mythic is just... way too much.

thats really all you have to say about everything i posted? yes, heroic was wotlk/cata's version of mythic, and casuals had normal. then they kept adding more difficulties FOR CASUALS. point is, hardcore raiders have always had one difficulty: the hardest. Casuals went from "want to raid? get good." in vanilla/tbc to "heres an easy mode" in wotlk/cata to "here is a plethora of options from "babby's first raid" to "you have to have half a brain to do this" in current heroic.