Modern raid design: it's a clusterfuck. In a circular room.

[Th3Scourge]

BfA boss fights are just forgettable really. ToS was pretty average, but Nighthold was awesome, the perfect culmination of an epic quest chain for an entire zone. Antorus was good too but didn't have the same polish as NH, and the tier sets (subjectively) didn't look as good.

I really don't foresee anyone ever going back to Uldir/BoD/CoS when the next xpac comes out.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Raiding as we know it (mechanically super complex mythic raiding) is dying fast. vast majority of people don't want 100 abilities spammed at their character. Classic raiding will be more popular although it takes a lot more time to farm. Mythic raiding is absolutely unnecessary for WoW success. Raiding should be about thematic memorable raid encounters with 1-2 cool abilities and very few "side" abilities that need to be taken care of, not a dance contest with dozen of things to consider. I have no idea how this raid design even gets remotely played by anyone. It's not what made WoW raiding great. I partly blame the rise of addons and homogenization of classes, if everyone can do everything you can put every possible obstacle into the boss design that's why it's so stacked with crap to do during the fight.

If they still designed raids like Classic raids, raiding would've died a decade ago.
Raid content evolved to match players, not the other way around.

Classic raiding with its 40-man teams becoming more popular than raiding in the game that's getting new fights regularly and offers a literal tourist mode (easy fights with fewer mechanics) without the need of 39 other players? I'd like to see that.

This feels mostly as if some people would love for fights to be less demanding so they'd have an easier time with them. Those people will have Classic soon enough.

- - - Updated - - -

BfA boss fights are just forgettable really. ToS was pretty average, but Nighthold was awesome, the perfect culmination of an epic quest chain for an entire zone. Antorus was good too but didn't have the same polish as NH, and the tier sets (subjectively) didn't look as good.

I really don't foresee anyone ever going back to Uldir/BoD/CoS when the next xpac comes out.

Then you don't foresee the future but rather what you believe based in your own bias.

There will 100% be players returning. Be it Hunters for the taming of Blood Beasts, Transmog hunters, Meta achievement groups.

[bmjclark]

Clusterfuck in a circular room honestly describes a lot of fights all the way back to vanilla. It's not really a new phenomenon.

[Th3Scourge]

If they still designed raids like Classic raids, raiding would've died a decade ago.
Raid content evolved to match players, not the other way around.

Classic raiding with its 40-man teams becoming more popular than raiding in the game that's getting new fights regularly and offers a literal tourist mode (easy fights with fewer mechanics) without the need of 39 other players? I'd like to see that.

This feels mostly as if some people would love for fights to be less demanding so they'd have an easier time with them. Those people will have Classic soon enough.

- - - Updated - - -



They you don't foresee the future but rather what you believe based in your own bias.

There will 100% be players returning. Be it Hunters for the taming of Blood Beasts, Transmog hunters, Meta achievement groups.

Nowhere near the same degree as past expansions. With the homogenization of transmogs by armor type, there's far less incentive to go on different classes. I love the transmog meta, but now that I've done it on a DK, Lock and Hunter and DH I have little incentive to go back on another class for the a tier set.

Even now there is fuck all reason to go into Uldir. At least in Legion you could go back and farm leggos if nothing else. And people wonder why players complain about a lack of content.

[hulkgor]

Nice rant, if you don't mind me saying.

/s

[MrLachyG]

BfA boss fights are just forgettable really. ToS was pretty average, but Nighthold was awesome, the perfect culmination of an epic quest chain for an entire zone. Antorus was good too but didn't have the same polish as NH, and the tier sets (subjectively) didn't look as good.

I really don't foresee anyone ever going back to Uldir/BoD/CoS when the next xpac comes out.

did people go back to Nighthold after Tomb came out? I certainly didn't. Only thing people might've gone back for was the mounts Gul'dan dropped, which will be the same for Jaina

[Malikath]

They pruned the living crap out of classes so they had to compensate for the removal of rotations you can fuck up by adding a crapload of mechanics and random graphical bloat in the encounters themselves.
It has nothing to do with circular rooms, mekka and oppulence are just as much of a clusterfuck as the rest, vectis was ok-ish, tho the blood pool wave things and soaks were kinda a clusterfuck.
People keep talking about encounters without mentioning the ''playing your class right in that situation'' part, which is non-existant since legion but probably even more important than the encounters themselves considering you're playing your class 100% of the time as opposed to the few hours you spend on the encounters.
Also the reason dps checks don't exist anymore.

yeah, pretty much, all done to appeal to people who spend more time on forums then in the game.
oh well, it will all be over soon.
either they'll correct after vanilla or the company will go bankrupt as their future projects fail to find the fictitious market that casuals believe they are.

- - - Updated - - -

-snip for exaggeration-

say what every you want to try and justify the dumbing down of the game to your level, just don't act like it's more popular or that it isn't a brain-dead "push the glowing button" for nearly all classes.

enjoy it, for as long as it still lasts.

[Raone]

Uu'nat has the same problem. It's a clusterfuck in a circular room. Conclave was a clusterfuck in a circular room. Mythrax was a clusterfuck in a circular room. So was Zul. Compare and contrast with encounter like Mekkatorque, Opulence, and Vectis. You know how to describe them in one mechanic. Mekkatorque is the voicecom encounter. Opulence is the gauntlet run encounter. Vectis is the debuff management encounter. How would you describe the Cabal? It's a clusterfuck in a circular room.

Mekkatorque is a clusterfuck in a circle room, there are so many mechanics especially that last phase outside of the 1 voicecom mechanic. Just because it has 1 mechanic you like doesn't mean its suddenly not your definition of a "clusterfuck in a circular room". Vectis is the most forgettable, boring, and personally my most hated encounter this expansion so I don't know why you think that is a good example. I'll give you Opulence but its pretty damn hard to come with unique encounters like that with how many bosses they have done already.

Every encounter is a clusterfuck in a circle room till you understand the fight, both Un'nat and Cabal make perfect sense to me. Cabal is about dealing with overlaps, using the risk vs reward theme for this raid. Nothing in the encounter can 1 shot you but together they can be deadly so you must deal with overlaps correctly. Un'nat is an endboss encounter which have always been mechanic/phase heavy since vanilla.

[Th3Scourge]

did people go back to Nighthold after Tomb came out? I certainly didn't. Only thing people might've gone back for was the mounts Gul'dan dropped, which will be the same for Jaina

Absolutely they did. The chance for leggos made all content relevant throughout Legion.

I don't remember the last Uldir group I saw.

[MrLachyG]

Absolutely they did. The chance for leggos made all content relevant throughout Legion.

I don't remember the last Uldir group I saw.

ah yeah good point. still you could make the same argument for every raid in previous expansions - once the next one comes out nobody gives a shit about the one that came before. and people were doing Nighthold and old raids in Legion for leggo chances, not because they wanted to but because they had to

[Advent]

So many people hate ToC and I've never fully understood why. For what it was, I really enjoyed it

The room felt cramped, the bosses were more aggravating than fun and fuck pvp-like encounters.

[Qnubi]

If they still designed raids like Classic raids, raiding would've died a decade ago.
Raid content evolved to match players, not the other way around.

Classic raiding with its 40-man teams becoming more popular than raiding in the game that's getting new fights regularly and offers a literal tourist mode (easy fights with fewer mechanics) without the need of 39 other players? I'd like to see that.

You are correct, change was needed but now they fail to change BACK. You see, everything in life cycles, taste, fashion, what's "in" etc. It's normal. It happens with movies, music and also with games. Turn based games were the shit back in the day, then it faded away and now turn based strategy is back again. Most games don't have these cycles since they don't exist long enough and don't have the mainstream attached to them long enough. WoW is one of the few games that can truly experience cycles. Back when they changed raiding to be more mechanically complex it was the correct move at the time because the easy mode raiding was getting boring. Now they have ventured forth so far into the ability spam in raiding and fail to realize that the cycle is over. Humans are easy to please, don't make the same design philosophy for years, just cycle though the proven ones. Stagnation is the worst you can do, it will drive off players. It's obvious that the current "hype" in gaming in general is going back to the roots. It's not just WoW Classic, look at CoD with Modern Warfare remake. Baldurs Gate 3 / old school RPGs resurgence. This is happening everywhere in the industry. It wouldn't surprise me if Diablo 4 is going to be as close to D1/d2 as possible because the high value developers are obviously working on upcoming titles and they generally have a better idea about the current flavor of the industry.

[erifwodahs]

Raiding as we know it (mechanically super complex mythic raiding) is dying fast. vast majority of people don't want 100 abilities spammed at their character. Classic raiding will be more popular although it takes a lot more time to farm. Mythic raiding is absolutely unnecessary for WoW success. Raiding should be about thematic memorable raid encounters with 1-2 cool abilities and very few "side" abilities that need to be taken care of, not a dance contest with dozen of things to consider. I have no idea how this raid design even gets remotely played by anyone. It's not what made WoW raiding great. I partly blame the rise of addons and homogenization of classes, if everyone can do everything you can put every possible obstacle into the boss design that's why it's so stacked with crap to do during the fight.

Could you back your claims up? About mythic raiding dying. Killing boss who only has 2 abilities for more than couple of times sounds really really boring. Currently you can at least compete for the ranks and the parses, because it is somewhat balanced, which can drive you to do the content, plus it is not a snooze fest, where you only move 2 times in the fights.

[M1r4g3]

Oh cut the crap, rotations have always been easy. If you ever stuggled with rotations and mechanics combined you just lacked the experience or the ability to think ahead.

Oh i agree, i never said they were hard, but they were a lot more punishing than they are now, not fucking up that rotation over a longer period of time was the ''hard''part.
Thats kinda my issue, before legion/wod(depending on the class) it was about doing both the mechanics and your rotation combined which made the fights difficulty, now its just mechanics. That created a new problem, which is not being able to do fights if 1-2 people are dead(unless you overgear the crap out of them)

[erifwodahs]

did people go back to Nighthold after Tomb came out? I certainly didn't. Only thing people might've gone back for was the mounts Gul'dan dropped, which will be the same for Jaina

Yes, people did:
Lego farms. Quite a few groups did all raids in normal+hc diff in few hours.
Tier set farms. Was still a thing for few classes (thx for TF, blizz.. )
Mount Farm
Tmog Farm

[Super Kami Dende]

To be fair. It's generally only a clusterfuck to People that have no idea what they are meant to be doing. If you know the fight, it becomes nearly methodical.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh cut the crap, rotations have always been easy. If you ever stuggled with rotations and mechanics combined you just lacked the experience or the ability to think ahead.

Yeah, ain't that the Truth. I always laugh when People try to act like Vanilla or TBC or Wrath somehow had some intricate combat system with brutal rotations. Rotations were more braindead back then than they ever were.

[Arainie]

Oh i agree, i never said they were hard, but they were a lot more punishing than they are now, not fucking up that rotation over a longer period of time was the ''hard''part.
Thats kinda my issue, before legion/wod(depending on the class) it was about doing both the mechanics and your rotation combined which made the fights difficulty, now its just mechanics. That created a new problem, which is not being able to do fights if 1-2 people are dead(unless you overgear the crap out of them)

I absolutely agree on your last point - and I'd like to add that fights have way too many raid wipe mechanics. I myself much preferred the design where enough failures would render you unable to beat the boss due to DPS/HPS requirements rather than blowing the whole raid up as is customary nowdays. That also helps to ensure that more gear lowers fight difficulty, something that's only half true with the current design philosophy. No matter how much gear you have a missed soak on Stormwall or a bomb exploding in the raid on Mekka is usually a pretty big disaster.

[Qnubi]

I absolutely agree on your last point - and I'd like to add that fights have way too many raid wipe mechanics. I myself much preferred the design where enough failures would render you unable to beat the boss due to DPS/HPS requirements rather than blowing the whole raid up as is customary nowdays. That also helps to ensure that more gear lowers fight difficulty, something that's only half true with the current design philosophy. No matter how much gear you have a missed soak on Stormwall or a bomb exploding in the raid on Mekka is usually a pretty big disaster.

Yup, yup. Agree with both of you. Dying slowly to attrition is a much better way to wipe than to one shot mechanics. It also left room for good players to shine, if your "good" players are still alive you have hope it still works out. I remember a lot of kills where 1 or 2 healers alone somehow pulled through and we thought it was a wipe but they somehow managed to heal the raid alone. Epic fights.

[Huzzaa]

If we're complaining about something, then I'd be complaining about the fact that fucking up a single thing, means it's almost always, instantly over.

The current raid has no tangential rewards, none(Don't come yapping about the 5 ilvls, it's not worth the effort + time). The fact that there were 12 alliance mythic kills 'checked yesterday' kind of confirms it (Plus the other fact that the faction is by all accounts, "nearly dead")

And just idk, come down with the amount of wipe mechanics in raids...

Uber hardcore mythic, that has 0 rewards is hardly enticing. But most of all, few near none of us care to smack heads into a wall for near 2 extra Jainas worth + rerolling half the guild for 2 meager bosses that carry nothing.

And that's what's most annoying about it. Is just the fact that the hardest(most prestigious) raid mode is now rudimental and just a waste of time.
It will be the rarest Cutting Edge title for sure... that few to no-one cares about.


This is such rambling but being serious now, I think the basic problem is the entire reward system is completely shafted right now. Fixing that would go a long way, and not fucking it up again, would go even longer.
Get rid of the Casino and make things mean something. 4 modes of a single boss, is not making things meaningful. It's 1 crux of many cruxes among cruxes of problems they've accumulated by now.

[Zephire]

4 modes of a single boss, is not making things meaningful. It's 1 crux of many cruxes among cruxes of problems they've accumulated by now.

Many difficulties are great. Means you can do stuff on your own level. I'm skipping to mythic as fast as possible, if I can. The lower difficulties can't entertain me enough. That said I'd be happy if I were a normal raider to have more challenge ahead of me and trying to push into heroic and mythic. I just don't see why difficulties would be an issue.