What rewards does raiding need to make it more appealing?

[Accendor]

It wouldnt happen, but what if Mythic+, Raids, PVP all had different gear.

Sort of like how old PVP gear worked. PVP gear scaled differently while in PVP, but all other gear provided an 'entry' level.


So Mythic+ gear is best suited for Mythic+. If you are wearing full Mythic+ gear when in one, awesome. If your Helmet is from a raid, its brought down to a minimum base level. So you wanna be good there? Play there.
Raid gear would be the same while in raids.
PVP gear for PVP.


It would seperate the content, making it so there was no point doing Mythic+ or Raids if your a PVP. No point doing Raids/PVP if your just into Mythic+.
the downside is it would make a need for multiple pieces of gear to be held onto, but this could be solved with either a way for specially storing them, OR, some sort of check for gear pieces - You got a 410 from Mythic+? Now your all your gear for that slot can scale up to that level, doesnt matter where its from.

A character and his gear should work everywhere the same. This means no PVP gear, no PVP talents etc.
The worst thing that could happen is to put another layer on top of it that makes gear not work everywhere. Benthic gear is already aweful in that regard.

[OnlineSamantha]

You are absolutely wrong on this one. We are doing raids even if there is no chance to get any upgrade from it. Been like this since MoP.
Literally nobody in our raiding group is excited about loot. 100% wants to just kill azshara.

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No it doesn't. It helps bad players to push forward when they hit a wall, and tier sets sucks ass, 4/6 slots of gear locked for entire raid tier.

The entire point of raiding for me is working towards a tangible goal; getting BiS. Randomized loot and Titanforging destroy that purpose completely. And tier sets add fun bonuses that are class-specific, and they enhance the class identity within the tier.

[kaminaris]

You clearly have no clue. This is over.
Go troll somwhere else.

So the momen you lose in conversation you resort to ad hominem. That is utmost embarrassing.

[Carnagexz]

There's really nothing they could do, I stopped raiding because I dislike the WoW community and I didn't like being treated poorly because I'm a woman. It turned me off from raiding in this game completely, and then the bad design decisions turned me off from playing the game at all in general.

There are infinitely better and more welcoming MMO communities out there, or just better gaming in general communities. FFXIV in my experience is infinitely more welcoming to women, for example. And even Blizzard's other games, like Overwatch, have been more welcoming to me than WoW, and the community there isn't even the greatest.

I'll be honest with you, you aren't going to find much sympathy when your broadly painting the whole community in a negative light; especially when you failed to address the harassment.

Talking aside (Maybe your the non-confrontational type) you could of just /ignore or block the fool. Do that and the bad guy disappears into the neither of online, not being able to communicate with you again. And you know what? If he is that stupid as to try to contact you further, you can easily file a ticket with blizz and you'd be surprised how fast the fool will get banned. Blizzard is so and so about a lot of things, but one thing they are serious about, and that is harassment. And I've seen situations like yours being solved within seconds, every time. If you are choosing to do nothing, then that is entirely on you and not the fault of the community, no one here is going to play gestapo police on your behalf because for some odd reason you don't do anything.

Online you have plenty of tools to stop unwanted behavior, you chose to be harassed.

[Aggrophobic]

So the momen you lose in conversation you resort to ad hominem. That is utmost embarrassing.

You don't "lose" conversations.
But when people are just repeating the same silly thing over and over again someone has to tell them their wrong. His blocked by the way and so are you.

[kaminaris]

The entire point of raiding for me is working towards a tangible goal; getting BiS. Randomized loot and Titanforging destroy that purpose completely. And tier sets add fun bonuses that are class-specific, and they enhance the class identity within the tier.

And this is a good thing it destroys goals of people focused on loot. There is literally nothing worse in raiding community than people obsessed with loot.

Progression is over but gotta farm this mount for everyone -> nope i already got my bis im stopping raiding till next patch.
Loot dramas caused by people obsessed with loot.


Tier sets in 90% of time were boring flat damage increases. There was nothing fun about that. Especially when I had my tier sets in 3 weeks and disenchant all the other gear in these slots.

[Carnagexz]

The entire point of raiding for me is working towards a tangible goal; getting BiS. Randomized loot and Titanforging destroy that purpose completely. And tier sets add fun bonuses that are class-specific, and they enhance the class identity within the tier.

I think thats how most people are. Everyone wants to progress no matter how small, but in repeat content like raiding the most sure way to see progression is loot, so thats what people associate it all with. If loot it cut, then progression will just feel empty.

[kaminaris]

You don't "lose" conversations.
But when people are just repeating the same silly thing over and over again someone has to tell them their wrong. His blocked by the way and so are you.

The only silly things was those which you said. The moment you spoke for everyone was the moment nobody could take you seriously anymore.

[Carnagexz]

And this is a good thing it destroys goals of people focused on loot. There is literally nothing worse in raiding community than people obsessed with loot.

Progression is over but gotta farm this mount for everyone -> nope i already got my bis im stopping raiding till next patch.
Loot dramas caused by people obsessed with loot.


Tier sets in 90% of time were boring flat damage increases. There was nothing fun about that. Especially when I had my tier sets in 3 weeks and disenchant all the other gear in these slots.

I mean you just described majority of raiding guilds out there. Yea, BIS achieved, everyone drops off the face of the earth until new content. I know this isn't the case for hardcore raiders, because its more for achievement than loot. But again this is not the case for majority of player base. I've been in plenty of raid guilds of all levels, and what you just describe is every guild up to hard-core raiding tier.

[kaminaris]

I mean you just described majority of raiding guilds out there. Yea, BIS achieved, everyone drops off the face of the earth until new content. I know this isn't the case for hardcore raiders, because its more for achievement than loot. But again this is not the case for majority of player base. I've been in plenty of raid guilds of all levels, and what you just describe is every guild up to hard-core raiding tier.

Heroic raids don't drop mount (usually), so it's not a bad thing if they stop raiding after they clear raids couple of time.

[OnlineSamantha]

I'll be honest with you, you aren't going to find much sympathy when your broadly painting the whole community in a negative light; especially when you failed to address the harassment.

Talking aside (Maybe your the non-confrontational type) you could of just /ignore or block the fool. Do that and the bad guy disappears into the neither of online, not being able to communicate with you again. And you know what? If he is that stupid as to try to contact you further, you can easily file a ticket with blizz and you'd be surprised how fast the fool will get banned. Blizzard is so and so about a lot of things, but one thing they are serious about, and that is harassment. And I've seen situations like yours being solved within seconds, every time. If you are choosing to do nothing, then that is entirely on you and not the fault of the community, no one here is going to play gestapo police on your behalf because for some odd reason you don't do anything.

Online you have plenty of tools to stop unwanted behavior, you chose to be harassed.

"You chose to be harassed"

Come on, man! Listen to yourself. The larger point is that she shouldn't have to do any of that because the community shouldn't be so toxic in the first place. How is that hard to understand? This is very clear-cut victim-blaming. And for the record I agree with her, I've seen way more sexism in WoW than I have in FFXIV. Elitism too for that matter.

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And this is a good thing it destroys goals of people focused on loot. There is literally nothing worse in raiding community than people obsessed with loot.

Progression is over but gotta farm this mount for everyone -> nope i already got my bis im stopping raiding till next patch.
Loot dramas caused by people obsessed with loot.


Tier sets in 90% of time were boring flat damage increases. There was nothing fun about that. Especially when I had my tier sets in 3 weeks and disenchant all the other gear in these slots.

Yes so now instead of having people drop off the raid when they feel done with it, they instead just don't set foot in there at all. How is that preferable?

[Carnagexz]

"You chose to be harassed"

Come on, man! Listen to yourself. The larger point is that she shouldn't have to do any of that because the community shouldn't be so toxic in the first place. How is that hard to understand? This is very clear-cut victim-blaming. And for the record I agree with her, I've seen way more sexism in WoW than I have in FFXIV. Elitism too for that matter.

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Yes so now instead of having people drop off the raid when they feel done with it, they instead just don't set foot in there at all. How is that preferable?

You can throw buzz-words all you like. But again, if all you need to do to make a particular behavior go away is type /ignore [playername] then WHY would you not?

It's illogical, I said she chose because if not then she is either dumb or a coward. (does that sound better?) Its like if something in her house caught fire and instead of putting it out she just stood there and watched everything go up in flames. Then she turns around and goes, "Oh the fire is evil it burned everything down.". Sure, the fire is bad, but that does NOT change the fact that she chose to do nothing. People seriously need to take responsibility for their actions or inaction as is the case here.

There is not shame in /ignore I've done it plenty of times to harassers, no sexism, you don't need a penis to learn of that command's use/existence. If you put your buzzword down for a sec and thought, then you'd realizing that instead of blaming her I am pointing out that she HAD the power to stop it all along.

And for the record same thing happens there too. I've seen in happen in a few FCs there as well, people are people everywhere you go, assholes too. This mentality of helplessness that you encourage isn't helping, its better for people to know that they can DO something about their situation than to label themselves a "victim" and play a pity-party.

[kaminaris]

"You chose to be harassed"

Come on, man! Listen to yourself. The larger point is that she shouldn't have to do any of that because the community shouldn't be so toxic in the first place. How is that hard to understand? This is very clear-cut victim-blaming. And for the record I agree with her, I've seen way more sexism in WoW than I have in FFXIV. Elitism too for that matter.

He is right, you have all the tools to stop the harassment but somehow you chose to not use them. Its not just sexism dude, i've met a lot annoying people over the years which i simply blocked. Fortunately It was enough to stop but the moment if anyone would be more persistent I would send report to blizzard.

It like saying it's all people fault mugging/robbing crime exists and police should not be needed at all, well sorry to disappoint you.

Yes so now instead of having people drop off the raid when they feel done with it, they instead just don't set foot in there at all. How is that preferable?

That is how it was for a long time, unless blizzard will make mythic more accessible.

[Sangfoudre]

Raiding is fine. Why do you want to change anything?
The main issue I see with raiding won't be solved by any reward: people have a life, average player age has increased over time, now more people have kids, some even grandchildren, people have work, people aren't all in 9-to-5 jobs.
So for these people, MM+ can be seen as a better way to do challenging content as you know that in half an hour you'd completed or not.
Serious raiding begins at 2 or 3 hours, 2 evenings a week and it can be complicated, MM+ are available at any hour, whereas raid offer are scarce during daytime.

[schwank05]

Totally remove Titan forging from the game it should never have been a thing in the first place, make the drops in Mythic 20% better than any other source in the game and make the drops in Heroic 10% better than anything else in the game. There is no incentive to spend the time raiding when you get the same or better gear by not raiding

[Augusta138]

So the momen you lose in conversation you resort to ad hominem. That is utmost embarrassing.

Some people only believe their own truth, and this aggraphobia guy is a prime example.

Especially his WoD / Legion statement are great. Considering there are interviews with answers like: LFR is a worthy addition to WoW and gets used a lot by a lot of players. (Or something similar)

These forums are a breeding place for people who are so disgruntled that they are on a crusade to encourage everyone to quit or see it their way.

Instead of taking the step to quit or not bother with the things they have issues with. (Whatever it is)

[Cosmic Janitor]

Raid gear not looking like shit would be first step tbh. But even then, I'm personally out of the mythic raid loop for too long. I just no longer care. I just farm it next expansion if I actually want something. The effort, in time and resources, is just not worth it anymore beyond the first 20-40% of the instance. The last 10% have pretty much become a meme in BfA and guilds just flat out don't care to clear the raid anymore.

[Marrilaife]

I've played on at least 10 different servers, I found a handful of decent guilds that weren't weird about me being a woman in over a decade of playing/raiding in WoW, but that's it. And what does "they did fine" mean? Like they performed fine? That was not an issue for me, the issue for me was getting creeped on by dudes in my guild. And it's not like it was all the guys in my guild, it would quite literally be just one single guy who would creep on me, I'd tell the people in charge about it, they'd say "there's nothing we can do", so for me it was either leave the guild or continue to be creeped on, those were my only 2 options. Repeat that over and over again in most guilds I join, with only a handful of guilds I've joined and raided in not being like that and dissolving over not having enough people to keep raiding. I play this game to relax and have fun in my free time, not to deal with getting creeped on. I'm not going to do an activity like raiding if every time I have to do it there's some guy whispering me asking me a bunch of questions like, where do I live, how old am I, send me pics of you, etc. I'm here to raid and play the game, and if I could avoid that kind of behavior, I would raid in this game.

Btw if I may ask, which region you play in? I'm in the EU and I remember one situation where a guy literally creeped on me, I left the guild for various reasons but the official reason I stated was the creeping together with screenshots and gm said he will kick the guy and afaik he did. But I left anyway because I had other issues with the guild too. That was in WOD and the only other "creeped on" case before that was in wotlk. Not so bad for ~13 years of play.

In pugs / lfr etc. it happened I was creeped on, so I usually avoid talking on voice comms and only listen unless it's really necessary. In m+ I had a few awkward behaviours but more along the lines of men being suspiciously polite than outright creeping on when they found out there's a female on voice comm. But in guilds? Not really so bad. Just wondering whether it's regional difference, because definitely not just a gender proportion thing - majority of raiders are male wherever I ended.

Tbh in some cases where I suspected someone might try some silly advances I would casually unrelated to anything mention that I'm married and it would deter further attempts. Still it's more facepalm worthy when I think most of the dudes that are "creeping" are of the age that could be as well my sons. Very awkward. They just don't know from the voice alone I'm easily 15-20 years older than some of these teens.

So it's a you problem, thanks for confirmation.

Nah, it's much more complicated than that. Unfortunately for the females that don't care to play that game within a game, there are a lot of "girls" that just crave male attention and actually reinforce the behaviour that flirting / creeping on is fine as long as the girl gets boosted around and other "advantages". I've seen a lot of these girls always have some entourage of creepers around them. Super prevalent in "social" guilds. However it's less common in higher levels of mythic raiding guilds because there you actually need the performance to stick around and more people care about being competitive than wooing a girl.

Talking aside (Maybe your the non-confrontational type) you could of just /ignore or block the fool. Do that and the bad guy disappears into the neither of online, not being able to communicate with you again. And you know what? If he is that stupid as to try to contact you further, you can easily file a ticket with blizz and you'd be surprised how fast the fool will get banned. Blizzard is so and so about a lot of things, but one thing they are serious about, and that is harassment. And I've seen situations like yours being solved within seconds, every time. If you are choosing to do nothing, then that is entirely on you and not the fault of the community, no one here is going to play gestapo police on your behalf because for some odd reason you don't do anything.

Online you have plenty of tools to stop unwanted behavior, you chose to be harassed.

A bit harsh, but yes, one thing you're right about, people can be banned for sexual harassment. I knew a guy that supposedly was excluded from getting beta keys due to past ban history and I heard from someone else he admitted he got banned for telling a girl "I wanna fuck you during your period" and she reported him. Can't say if you can get banned if you don't say anything explicitly sexual and where lies the line, but for obvious cases you can. Same as with racial / homophobic / fascist slurs, you can easily eat a ban for these. Or threats of violence as long as it's interpreted in a way the person was threatening harm / to kill *you* and not *your character in game*.

A character and his gear should work everywhere the same. This means no PVP gear, no PVP talents etc.
The worst thing that could happen is to put another layer on top of it that makes gear not work everywhere.

Gear working everywhere and for every spec except trinkets / weapons is fine, and saves bag space, but there *should* be differences between different modes, otherwise how can you balance stuff? We have cases of disc priests being OP in raids but not strong enough in m+, specific healers being OP in pvp, and so forth. There should be tuning knobs to ensure specs can be viable yet not OP in any content they want to participate in.

On the other hand they basically neutered tanks in pvp by nerfing both their damage and healing / self-healing and then put essences for tanks in pvp content too... le sigh.

If you don't do proper tuning you end up with dead specs or specs only good for 1 type of content. The other option is to make specs "same-ish" and nobody wants that where everyone has the same abilities just with different colours and animations.

First off, guilds who aren't recruiting "exceptional players" aren't truly attempting to improve their roster, they just want people to fill the missing slots and have their current line up remain the same.
Unpopular opinion, people who are willing to play what the raid needs are more valueable than people who just want to stick X, and i'm saying this as someone who mains Elemental (out of all specs) for over a decade now and still raids within the higher echolons.

That's not a design issue, that's a people issue, if you have three Dps Warrior already, you don't need a fourth, for a "good line up" someone needs to reroll.

Next, as hinted already, designing Melee "friendly" raids is extremely difficult, because those encounters have serious weaknesses.
It's a simple equation, Range Dps can stand anywhere within a circle that has a 80yard diameter and still do their role, whereas melee are cramped into a circle with a ~10yard diameter that's even cut in half due to parry.

Even a simple mechanic such as "spread out" doesn't fly in a melee heavy raid, the complete opposite, a "stack up" mechanic is completely trivial in a melee heavy raid.
In a ranged heavy raid, simply combining these two mechanics already creates a modicum of difficulty that's reasonable to solve, whereas on the Melee side, it's just completely bonkers, one mechanic is a complete pain, the other entirely trivial.

Now, Blizzard went down the path of melee not being targeted by some abilities, the pinnacle of that design was Nighthold, where melees had to do virtually nothing on a lot of encounters.
Look how Ranged Dps dance around during Gul'dan P1, then compare it to Melees whose sole job it was to stand with their back towards the middle of the room.
Gul'dan isn't the only example, there are other encounters in Nighthold where Melees do not have to play any mechanic at all.

Following that design paradigm is obviously bad as well, where ~half of your dps doesn't have to worry about mechanics at all whereas the other half has to handle all of them.
That simply triggered the opposite effect, people started to stack Melees so you'd have a few ranged dps left who just handle all the mechanics while the Melee dps kills the boss.
That sucks for melees, i get that, but on the other hand, one has also has see the side that they have the benefit of never worrying about certain mechanics.

Simply cutting down that number won't solve that issue, even back when 10man raiding was a thing, that was still a problem, almost any decent 10man raid only had like a Dps Warrior and a Rogue at best, the rest was made up by ranged Dps.

What I'm saying is people quit all the time, but look what slots are open for filling. Usually ranged dps and then healers. Guilds that recruit "all classes, exceptional players are welcome to apply" basically don't NEED anyone. The ones that NEED someone is because someone quit / left and a spot has opened.

Melee spots are limited by the boss hitbox. Pre-nerf mythrax and fetid devourer were prime examples where you physically had limited amounts of "safe spots" in melee range and everyone past that number could only be slotted as range dps. Even if the raid had 40 people and not 20, the melee spots would be the same. So that's what I mean the bigger the raid, the more range dps you need, but the melee spots don't grow.

Nighthold had mechanics like soaking Krosus adds or Trillax cakes that could be performed by both melee and ranged and were a dps loss to both. It's a big exaggeration to claim melee could do nothing and ranged had to do all the jobs - unless your guild decided that to be feasible by having enough ranged to cover all the "bitch jobs". You couldn't just exempt 70% of the raid from doing anything, most of these mechanics couldn't be covered by just a handful of people, except maybe on normal difficulty. The only boss that punished ranged was Gul'dan and you know what? Good that there was 1 endboss than did because every other one punished melee over ranged, so why not swap it for once?

And NH still had bosses that were "bad with too many melee", look Star Augur and how too many melee could easily mean insta Grand Trine explosion when the marks came. So the melee had to stop dps on a timer and run out (lose dps) or you had to slot so few melee they'd 100% not collide while still staying in melee range.

And maybe, just maybe, if they have such a big problem inventing encounters balanced around a lot of melee they shouldn't have put 9 melee classes vs 6 ranged in this game? It's inherently unfair we need more ranged to fill the raid while the game has 50% more melee classes than ranged ones.

Also how about adding more utility to melee they actually have to use instead of "the only duty of melee is to interrupt"? And adding mechanics to raids that would require such utility? So far a lot of "mandatory utility" ended up in the hands of ranged: mass dispel, spellsteal, demonic gateway, mind control, etc. And when dps dks had cool, unique utility - mass grip - it got removed and restricted to tank. Because needing a mage / lock / priest for your raid is fine but dk is not? Or if it is, he has to play blood, like on mythic Aggramar?

Rallying cry for dps warriors was a step in the right direction, now time to put back utility on the rest of the melee so it's not a role with a description "tunnel the boss and maybe sometimes interrupt". Shiv is coming back for rogues, so that's good too. But we need more.

P.S. Sorry for long post but didn't wanna to triple post with answers to 3 different things.

[Flurryfang]

Just make the gear fun.

Remove titanforging, make the raids have a natural gear ladder from difficulty to difficulty, and just make the gear fun. The natural solution would ofcourse be tier sets. I don't know why they won't do them, because they really give a unique identity to all the raids. They often make classes play differently for each raid-tier and add some spunk into the gameplay.

[Gaidax]

Yet it always springs up since the raiding was around in this game. The funny thing is that everyone is making this adversarial for no reason. If your not raiding for loot, then good for you. Some do though, hens when you cut loot the number of people who attempt the content will decrease. Given that raiding for the challenge crowd is so small in number, we can all agree that thats not majority of population though. So should they then be the ones to ask for the changes that (According to them) do not really impact them? If you don't care about loot, then WHY do you care about what others loot? That kind of silly. It's like no true Scottsman type of deal.

The core issue with raiding is that not everyone can commit to the lifestyle change that it brings. Because of that commitment serious raiders will always be a minority of minorities. Litterally same as PvP Hardcore arena, its great that you guys are where you are, but from the business perspective Blizz really shouldn't cater to that small number of players at the expense of the majority. People not participating in LFR when loot got nerfed isn't a myth, it happened. When ever gear got cut it always resulted in people dropping content. Again, if thats ok for YOU, then sure. But again, not the case for all.

Ehh? Well guess some like you feel super strongly about loot and that's ok. Not sure why you get so mad over this and stomp feet in rage. You belong in a group of "some do it for loot" or "some do it for a bit of everything" and that's fine. There are also people who don't belong to either group and it's fine too.