What rewards does raiding need to make it more appealing?

[Reivur]

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.

That's you and a minority unfortunately. If you don't believe so, look at the constant complaining that Mythic Raiders throw at M+ for being able to, albeit slowly through weekly pieces catch up to them, or through doing hundreds of runs and titanforge fishes to even attempt to get the 1-3 pieces a week a Mythic Raider would get at their ilvl and them still screaming bloody murder about it. About how they'll complain about M+ being so easy and that it should never be as good as raid gear, when the reality is that argument is the most dishonest trainwreck in all of WoW.

One piece of content has infinite scaling. The other doesn't. Is it too easy? Make it keep scaling until it isn't. Do you have mythic xyz on farm? Nothing you can do to make it harder except bringing in alts or pepegas. The 'problem', if there even is one is because Blizzard has decided that, for whatever reason, M+ rewards cap out or is too generous at +10 instead of higher numbers where they could just as organically make M+ people seek out higher climbs like they do with normal -> heroic -> mythic, yet choose not to.

But you'll see it in M+. The people who one-and-done M+10s for their chest. And you'll see it in raiders, which is even more troubling because a lot of them when they cap out often retire, especially if they stop making progress. I much prefer the kind of people you're with who would actually want to complete the challenge rather than NEED an incentive.

But nowadays if the Carrot isn't shiny enough then you don't have a reason to play the video game. Apparently.

[Zyky]

So with no class sets or tier bonuses coming in Shadowlands initially what rewards do you think blizzard should add to raiding to make it more appealing for both casual and hardcore players? Or do you think raiding rewards are fine as is?

It's simple, gear that can't be obtained at the same item level in other forms of play. This kept raiding prosperous for nearly 12 years without any complaints except from the people who didn't want to put forth the effort to earn it. Now we're in this messy place where in a lot of situations raiders BiS gear doesn't even come from the raid and that should never be the case.

[MoanaLisa]

You're 100% correct, of course.

Still, it'd be nice if Heroic had some cosmetic rewards instead of them stuffing it all into Mythic. Having battle pets drop from bosses in Normal/Heroic EP was good, but it'd be nice to see a mount that people besides the 0.0001% will ever see, let alone obtain.

I agree. I'll catch a shovel full of shit with this but the impetus to put a bunch of essentially cosmetic rewards into mythic instead of going for a more straight-forward power reward system is a mistake. A fictional stretching of that sort of things beyond all bounds would be to only reward flying to mythic raiders. That's a parody-style idea to demonstrate what's wrong with it as it is now.

[bmjclark]

If 10 man mythic made a return, i'd raid. Otherwise, ill stick to mythic+. Rewards have nothing to do with it.

[Soon-TM]

Mythic raiders already get the best gear in the game (in stats as well as in looks), have exclusive mounts, titles, toys, even special phases during boss fights. And some of them still cry bloody murder when a pleb gets a lucky TF. The entitlement is strong there, man...

Don't get me wrong, the WF/TF thing can be frankly dumb at times, and I think it should be removed, or at least be limited to +10/+15 ilvls at most. But the QQ from some mythic raiders is frankly cringeworthy.

[Restors]

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.

thats... actually not a bad idea.. Guild wars 2 has fractions with the requirement of agony resistance in order to complete higher levels. Something like that for mythic+ would be kind of cool. with the amount of bagslots we have now, having a set for M+, the other for raid and possibly the third for pvp, would be something i would farm for and feel rewarded.

[Reivur]

If 10 man mythic made a return, i'd raid. Otherwise, ill stick to mythic+. Rewards have nothing to do with it.

Also god yes this. I have NEVER felt 'epic' with more people. Its the opposite in fact. The more people there are the less relevant I am mechanically, the less impact my heals are with them being more like a layer, and when I dps its like I'm contributing to stubbing a toe instead of ripping off an arm. Whoa dude, you did 6-7% of his life bar over ten minutes. E P I C. Zzzz

[Soon-TM]

I still think that WotLK's raiding model was the best they ever came with. You had 10N, aka the faceroll mode (yet not as faceroll as current LFR), 25N, aka the "friends and family" difficulty, which required at least a modicum of skill.

Then came 10HM, which provided a decent challenge to players in appropriate ilvl, and 25HM, aka the elite mode.

The one problem with this though, is that it doesn't leave much room for M+.

No TF ensured that no one was outgearing the raid before ever setting foot in it, aside from a couple of pieces bought with badges.

[Aggrophobic]

Your assumption is that people do not raid because it's not rewarding enough. There are plenty of other reason not to raid:

- heavy time commitment. You generally are required to be on schedule for two (or more) days for several hours each week. That's a time commitment many people aren't willing to make nowaways. You have a very large pool of fun entertainment to pick from, raid rewards have a hard time to compete against "fun".
- you have to be with a lot of other peoples. Chances are, the more people you have, the more likely you have to spend several hours a week with people you get not along. Yet again, something that competes with the "fun" of other entertainments. People think that 10 man killed 25 man because of the path of least resistance to gear, while part of the truth is that with 25 man you most likely had several people you didn't have fun with.
- there's a lot of stuff in a raid that wastes time: totally boring, yet long, trash, the smoking/coffee/shitting-break people need, the guy that got a call from his mom, the guy that accidentally released, the guy that likes to argue, standing around while the leads discuss stuff and decide how to progress further... (yeah yeah, you can set strict rules for your people, but good "fun" probably doesn't look like that)

I'll bring FFXIV's Baldesion Arsenal up now, because it's imo a rather odd existence: It was a 58 man raid in a 120 people instanced zone. To successfully clear it you had to organzie 58 people, get them in the same public instance, followed by having none of the remaing 62 people take a slot in the instance. The public instanced had bonus abilities you had to prepare for the raid. Then inside you had a strict time limit, dead is dead (ressing was very limited, required farming zone abilities, and also RNG based with a 70% chance for the rezzer to be dead), and moderately hard bosses (you also hit the enrage if people went for surviveability zone abilities instead of DPS - and mechanics could one shot).

That thing was a massive nightmare to organize and prepare, the raid itself was comparatively difficult (for FFXIV standards) - and then you place the rewards against all of the downsides: A mount, and tokens that upgraded your gear earned in the zone with a zone specific stat (i.e you deal more dmg and take less damage in the zone - which generally was a zerg/grindfest). Yet you had people farming this content for months, organizing groups, teaching new peoples, just to help them get the mount...

Now where does that place your "reward" for raiding?

It's again, not an assumption. When loot was removed or reduced, people stopped or did the content less.
There is no way around the fact that the main drive and reward in WoW is loot.

Why would you compare others games to WoW here? Final fanatsy is not WoW.

[Soon-TM]

It's again, not an assumption. When loot was removed or reduced, people stopped or did the content less.
There is no way around the fact that the main drive and reward in WoW is loot.

Why would you compare others games to WoW here? Final fanatsy is not WoW.

Spot right. E.g. warfronts are among the biggest flops of BfA, yet almost everyone did them (at least at the beginning) because they gave a very nice reward. But since rewards haven't been updated, chances are that no one bothers with them anymore, except for xmog purposes.

[kaminaris]

That's you and a minority unfortunately. If you don't believe so, look at the constant complaining that Mythic Raiders throw at M+ for being able to, albeit slowly through weekly pieces catch up to them, or through doing hundreds of runs and titanforge fishes to even attempt to get the 1-3 pieces a week a Mythic Raider would get at their ilvl and them still screaming bloody murder about it. About how they'll complain about M+ being so easy and that it should never be as good as raid gear, when the reality is that argument is the most dishonest trainwreck in all of WoW.

That is where you are wrong. In fact, i see and hear no complaints about from my fellow mythic raiders (and even here on forum it is super rare). Unless you have statistics (which i doubt) you are simply wrong on this one.

[Seradi]

M+ provides an easier alternative to raiding.

Many people will follow the path of least resistance, so they chose to do M+ instead of raid.

Yeah, it’s just simple math. On most servers it’s way easier to put together a group of 5 good players that you like and trust than it is 20.

[rowaasr13]

It's not rewards that is most serious problem with raids. The most thing raids need are some solution for insane logistics necessary to play. People want to fight bosses, not to struggle with 2nd management job in addition to their day work.

[arkanon]

If you want raiding to be more appealing to non-raiders the first thing would be to make new raiders, or those coming back after a break, more welcome. Whatever the reality is, the perception is that those who are the most visible proponents of organized raiding on forums and in the game are, shall we say, unwelcoming. Your immediate pool of potential recruits are in LFR but if you want to actually recruit anyone you'll have to stop insulting them first. Good luck with that.

Structurally, organized raiding is fine. Socially, it's a mess with many bars to entry.

This expac, we have found recruiting exceptionally difficult. Part of the problem is we generally raid heroic now, rather than mythic. Recruiting for normal / heroic is basically dead. Most people would prefer to farm a couple of mythic+, farm lfr, farm warfronts, farm pearls, and still end up with a similar ilvl. Sure, its taken more time, but it was on their time, when they could, as they pleased. Zero commitment, just playing on their terms for similar gear.

Early on in BC we recruited mostly from Heroic dungeons, and it was very, very productive. Some stayed one tier, some stayed one expac, and some havnt left.

- - - Updated - - -

M+ provides an easier alternative to raiding.

Many people will follow the path of least resistance, so they chose to do M+ instead of raid.

See my comment above, I 100% agree. If they find themselves in a "bad" m+ group, its 10 minutes wasted and they leave, and just find another group. People seem very reluctant to commit to a raid team, and as you said, follow the path of least resistance.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not rewards that is most serious problem with raids. The most thing raids need are some solution for insane logistics necessary to play. People want to fight bosses, not to struggle with 2nd management job in addition to their day work.

This was a problem in mythic, but stepping out of that and into heroic gives extreme flexibility for raid makeups, partly because of the large reduction in difficulty, but obviously because of the Flex raid size. The problem for me is the alternatives are "easier" for gearing.

[arandomuser]

I thought in legion relics and legendaries made raiding super rewarding.

People dont know What they want, legion had the largest amount of reccuring subs since mop. I know people complained about RNG and acquisition, but it dosent matter what people complained about BECAUSE IT WORKED

raiding for legendaries worked, i loved me and my guild would weekly clear emerald nightmare and nighthold for AP and legendary chance.
Relics, you could always keep looking for your BIS relic, it was a minor upgrade but it wasnt something to look forward.

and i already see the usual haters preach/bellular saying " NO RNG AT ALL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE BECAUSE RNG BAD" No it isnt, we had RNG_less raid gear in WOD youd log into raid, get your chance at tier set, then log out til next week. that was boring in legion you had a constant INCENTIVE to grind, do WQs, FARM M+ do old raids, there was a reason to log in everyday ALL EXPANSION.

And another argument they make is "well make the incentive not power based" nobodys going to play content for stupid aesthetics, there has to be actual power progression to get people to do it, unfortunately looks like with shadowlands they might cave to the youtubers and make it so you have no incentives to do anything outside raiding, which was the problem we had in CATACLYSM AND MOP and WOD.

[Th3Scourge]

Having mythic rewards be mythic rewards is a good start. Not having mythic-quality items dropping from lower difficulties in the form of Titanforging is a good start

[Drusin]

How about tier that's not tier

It's a class specific armor set that's purely cosmetic. No stats just a set of armor, maybe pieces from different bosses? Guaranteed drop to show progress. Or a complete set off last boss?

[kaminaris]

Having mythic rewards be mythic rewards is a good start. Not having mythic-quality items dropping from lower difficulties in the form of Titanforging is a good start

That is absolutely irrelevant. As people here said, finding time with fixed schedule and organizing 20 people is the main barrier, not rewards. Also, one lucky TF doesn't make you even remotely close to mythic raiders.

[Chromell]

Solve the issue with war/titanforging. Raiding is already appealing to me, my issue with it is the player requirement for the top difficulty.

[Otimus]

Ignoring my overly negative post, if you want some real solutions, IMO, about the only things that'd maybe work are bringing back badges (this in general would be a major boon to the overall health of content long term, and needs to happen, but it won't) , having items drop that you need to complete a questline (like the legendaries in MoP and WoD), and lowering the amount of players needed. If there was a way to re-kajigger normal and heroic to allow 8 players, that'd be a start, but I don't know if that's even possible. 5 would be even better, but that sure as hell isn't happening, and it'd probably piss some hardcore people off if it did. Mythic probably would also get a huge short in the arm if it was cross realm from the start and doable with 10, at least 15, people. Again, those things will probably never happen. There's a bit of an attitude of preserving the sanctity of raiding while also making one part of it viably useful while also making doing it prohibitively difficult that just works with many other factors (some I outlined in my first post) inherently unappealing to most players that it's never going to appeal to others unless there's fundamental changes that I don't think Blizzard will do.

That being all said, having things you want in it, and feel like is worth doing to get it is very important, and for most people, that isn't a thing. Making it have better rewards won't fix that for most people. It wasn't even a thing where it was for all intents and purposes the only way to advance your character. Making all the changes they DID make, and making it even easier to get into didn't help either. Normal is about on par, just a tad more difficult than MoP LFR was, and barely anyone even does that. Even when it's been relevant gear wise for the audience. That should give you a clue with what you're working with here. I find it hard to believe LFR in and of itself is even all that popular anymore. It's probably the most popular form of raiding, sure, but you effectively get nothing out of it, and it isn't very fun to run more than a few times, at best. Stuff is in kind of a weird place, and it's been there since the end of SoO, and it's weird that people only now are starting to notice it. The problem is that there's only two forms of content worth bothering with. Mythic+ and Mythic raids and essentially the rest of the entire game is instantly worthless after a few days of playing at cap. I sure hope Shadowlands fixes this, but I don't think it will.