Unpopular opinion: 10 man raids should make a return in Shadowlands.

[DemonDays]

In my opinion, 10 man raiding was the pinnacle of raiding in World Of Warcraft. 20 man Mythic feels a bit awkward. Maybe it shouldn't even exist at all? Flex is a great feature, but I feel as though the hardest difficulty should be focused more on smaller scale content so more groups can be formed, and it would also make balancing a lot easier for not just the raid, but for classes as well. Smaller scale, easier to balance the raid, making it possibly more tuned and difficult than the current implementation of Mythic? Like I said, this is my unpopular opinion, and you all are all entitled to disagree with me, or agree.

My Pros and cons to 10 man raiding

Pros:

Easy to organize

Less of a meta presence (smaller groups = more of each class or spec will be taken)

Easier to gear up a dedicated raid team.

More fun than 25 man or Mythic (opinion)

Less people = less time between each pull of the boss during progression.

Way easier to get to know 10-15 people than 20-30 people.

Cons:

Less gear drops

Easier to leave a guild and join another 10 man group. Doubled edged sword of 10 man raiding.

?


What are your opinions on Mythic raiding in it's current state? the biggest thing for me has always been getting to know more and more people, it's difficult to juggle all of that and real life at times, 10 man raiding was fun, engaging, and it felt more..personal between the 10 members in the raid.

If this sounds like it should be in the raiding discussion forum by the way, my apologies.

Thanks for contributing to my post!

The reason Flex was removed for Mythic is because Blizzard was too lazy to balance it.

It's literally the only reason.

Mythic guilds would find the perfect amount of people to bring certain mechanics to a threshold and then bench the rest of their roster.

It's a Blizzard laziness problem, as with many of the great features that have died over the years.

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What... the fuck? I never said it was? I'm stating facts: After 10M Heroic was removed, the game has had 10 million subscribers twice on record and the expansions are selling better than they ever have in the past. If 10M Heroic were this huge fucking problem that you suggest, then people wouldn't be buying the fucking game. It's insane that I have to explain this to you.

I love how fanboys are allowed to cite sub numbers to support their arguments but no one else can.

You're aware that people still buying the game isn't a good metric either right? I mean look at the ridiculous hype train of BfA and it's sales numbers. Sales do not equal a well designed game. HELLO? WE ARE CURRENTLY LIVING BFA RIGHT NOW. WHAT MORE EVIDENCE DO YOU NEED?

People still buy this game because:

• They are emotionally invested. 15 years worth of it. Mounts, achievements etc etc.
• Heinously addicted - this forum should be an indication of that.
• There's nothing else comparable on the market. WoW is still the "best mmo" when you add addiction and emotional investment to the mix.

[Mozu]

I actually agree. You can find plenty of instances of me telling people that using subscriber counts as support for any argument is inherently shitty but like most things there's always exceptions to the rule. You're saying that there's this huge untapped demographic of players who are just waiting for 10M Heroic to be readded to the game... I'm simply asking if this were the case, why in the actual fuck has the game continued to be successful after its removal?

I'm confused on your confusion. It depends on what you mean by "successful," but the game would continue to do just fine no matter what they do. The idea is to get more people to play than is currently playing.

It's a fact, though? BfA is WoW's best-selling expansion, it doesn't matter what people think about the expansion. It's a fact.

It's a fact, but you're using it as an argument for design choice, implying that because a expansion sold well everything they've done is justified. All those people could've bought the game and immediately quit when they realized what BFA entailed (which is what I did after Uldir).

Again, hype doesn't translate to any sort of argument for good game design. We see people pre-ordering games that turn out to be very bad all the time in gaming.

Are you willing to make the argument that there are millions of people buying WoW expansions in the vain hope that maybe Blizzard will eventually reimplement 10M Heroic raiding? Do you understand how impossibly naive this viewpoint is?

No? I'm willing to make the argument that there are millions of people buying WoW expansions in the vain hope that maybe Blizzard will improve the things that they feel were wronged over the years. 10M is just one of many things people hope for.

I have bought every expansion with that hope, and I'm definitely not alone.

I've said this three or four times now but it's pretty simple: If you're going to organize a raid team, the intention of that raid team should be to clear the instance not to farm the easy bosses and call it a day. 10M Heroic raiding lent itself to raid teams who had no intention of clearing instances which is antithetical to one of the core ideologies Blizzard has for raid design. If the argument you have is that accessibility in Mythic raiding is important, Blizzard clearly disagrees with you. And if accessibility is your actual concern, there's literally three fucking raid difficulty levels to choose from. If you still cannot find a place to raid then maybe it's better to ask whether WoW is the right game for you. And if it isn't, that's fine. Blizzard isn't beholden to design the game around every single player who has ever played the game's personal preferences. They're beholden to the people who are currently playing. And if you can't see how being perfectly fine with destroying the current community is equally as toxic (if not moreso) than me calling casual Heroic raiding wheelchair accessible then yes:

What you continually fail to understand is people are typically more social in a smaller team settings. It has nothing to do with accessibility (unless I guess you mean access to mythic raiding in general, which.. then yes. Obviously.). I (and others) want to be competitive in a small group of players. Currently, there's no avenue for that for me. 10M "lending itself to raid teams who had no intention of clearing instances" is simply not true, and even if it was it can be solved by having different difficulties for 10 just like there are different difficulties for 20 right now. 10M Normal, Heroic, Mythic - LFR-Heroic can be for guilds who don't want to be cutting edge.

10M had a very competitive scene back then. Paragon dominated. It can again. It's not rocket science.

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I love how fanboys are allowed to cite sub numbers to support their arguments but no one else can.

Yeah, funny isn't it?

[bloodmoth13]

what if they made dungeons scale up to 10 mans? 1 tank, 1/2 healers and 7/8 dps. Would be a great way to deal with dps saturation.

[DemonDays]

I'm confused on your confusion. It depends on what you mean by "successful," but the game would continue to do just fine no matter what they do. The idea is to get more people to play than is currently playing.



It's a fact, but you're using it as an argument for design choice, implying that because a expansion sold well everything they've done is justified. All those people could've bought the game and immediately quit when they realized what BFA entailed (which is what I did after Uldir).

Again, hype doesn't translate to any sort of argument for good game design. We see people pre-ordering games that turn out to be very bad all the time in gaming.



No? I'm willing to make the argument that there are millions of people buying WoW expansions in the vain hope that maybe Blizzard will improve the things that they feel were wronged over the years. 10M is just one of many things people hope for.

I have bought every expansion with that hope, and I'm definitely not alone.



What you continually fail to understand is people are more social in smaller team settings. It has nothing to do with accessibility. I (and others) want to be competitive in a small group of players. Currently, there's no avenue for that for me. 10M "lending itself to raid teams who had no intention of clearing instances" is simply not true, and even if it was it can be solved by having different difficulties for 10 just like there are different difficulties for 20 right now. 10M Normal, Heroic, Mythic - LFR-Heroic can be for guilds who don't want to be cutting edge.

10M had a very competitive scene back then. Paragon dominated. It can again. It's not rocket science.

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Yeah, funny isn't it?

Fairly obvious that sub numbers dove hardcore at the start of BfA. But you're not allowed to discuss that or the fanboys go mental.

I'm in a fairly casual Heroic guild that has been around for 8ish years. All friends. Some of us IRL mates.

As soon as we down AOTC we usually un-sub from the game as the patch has nothing else to offer other than meaningless grind(alts are dead in this expac). It's possible that if Mythic was still open for Flex that we would attempt it. What we are NOT going to do is to recruit 10+ more raiders we don't know and attempt to teach them mechanics.

How is this hard for people to grasp? Flex was GOOD. Blizzard was just too lazy to fucking balance it.

[endorus]

At a heroic level 10 main raiding still exists though, the difficulty in 10 man raiding at mythic (old HC) was the scaling.

I would fully support scaled dungeons though, 10 man M+ would be amazing.

[Relapses]

I'm confused on your confusion. It depends on what you mean by "successful," but the game would continue to do just fine no matter what they do. The idea is to get more people to play than is currently playing.



It's a fact, but you're using it as an argument for design choice, implying that because a expansion sold well everything they've done is justified. All those people could've bought the game and immediately quit when they realized what BFA entailed (which is what I did after Uldir).

Again, hype doesn't translate to any sort of argument for good game design. We see people pre-ordering games that turn out to be very bad all the time in gaming.



No? I'm willing to make the argument that there are millions of people buying WoW expansions in the vain hope that maybe Blizzard will improve the things that they feel were wronged over the years. 10M is just one of many things people hope for.

I have bought every expansion with that hope, and I'm definitely not alone.



What you continually fail to understand is people are typically more social in a smaller team settings. It has nothing to do with accessibility (unless I guess you mean access to mythic raiding in general, which.. then yes. Obviously.). I (and others) want to be competitive in a small group of players. Currently, there's no avenue for that for me. 10M "lending itself to raid teams who had no intention of clearing instances" is simply not true, and even if it was it can be solved by having different difficulties for 10 just like there are different difficulties for 20 right now. 10M Normal, Heroic, Mythic - LFR-Heroic can be for guilds who don't want to be cutting edge.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Your "solution" to casual Heroic raiding is to simply make it so you literally cannot have a larger raid than 10 players? Oh my dear sweet summer child.

[Advent]

No? I'm willing to make the argument that there are millions of people buying WoW expansions in the vain hope that maybe Blizzard will improve the things that they feel were wronged over the years. 10M is just one of many things people hope for.

I have bought every expansion with that hope, and I'm definitely not alone.

Vain and naive hope, in fact. I can't imagine that you or anyone else thinks that's an intelligent thing to do. Why would you give money to a company and hope they do what you want them to? That's not how the free world works, you withhold money and buy a product that better suits your needs to give that company competition for your dollar. That's like if your kid pees on the carpet on purpose, you give him/her a cookie and hope they don't do it again. That's laughably foolish imo.

[Mozu]

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Your "solution" to casual Heroic raiding is to simply make it so you literally cannot have a larger raid than 10 players? Oh my dear sweet summer child.

No. The game stays exactly like it is now. Flex normal, flex heroic, mythic 10M. My sweet summer child.

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Vain and naive hope, in fact. I can't imagine that you or anyone else thinks that's an intelligent thing to do. Why would you give money to a company and hope they do what you want them to? That's not how the free world works, you withhold money and buy a product that better suits your needs to give that company competition for your dollar. That's like if your kid pees on the carpet on purpose, you give him/her a cookie and hope they don't do it again. That's laughably foolish imo.

Most games don't last multiple decades. I will always give WoW a chance because it was a big part of my childhood, as it was for most people who have played it for over a decade. That is, unless something better comes out in the MMO category, which thus far hasn't happened.

[Itori]

I loved 10 man raids because i didnt have to join a guild to raid and share loot, it was far easier to get a small group of friends together to run raids, im not sure when they were phased out, was it cata?

[Gorsameth]

I loved 10 man raids because i didnt have to join a guild to raid and share loot, it was far easier to get a small group of friends together to run raids, im not sure when they were phased out, was it cata?

After MoP I believe because we had amazing solo healed 10m Garrosh in SoO

[Relapses]

How is this hard for people to grasp? Flex was GOOD. Blizzard was just too lazy to fucking balance it.

Flex Mythic has nothing to do with Blizzard being "too fucking lazy to balance it." It's impossible to balance while keeping the integrity of the raid intact. If certain raid encounters are easier with 13 people in the raid than 14, 15 or 20, then players are going to only ever bring 13 people. Conversely, if a certain encounter is easier with 30 people in the raid, then guilds will only ever bring 30 people to that encounter. Add onto this the fact that every mechanic in the raid would need to be scaleable and you're, yet again, putting the encounter design team in a restrictive box. (One which 20M Mythic was designed to eliminate.) If Flex Mythic were a thing, you'd have a sliding scale of raid sizes and the whole fucking thing would be a joke. You'd also see shit like, "WF 17-man ONLY raid team." Like, fuck right off with that noise. Mythic needs to be a fixed size to prevent this degenerate playstyle and it has nothing at all to do with "balancing." The fact that you and other people prefer smaller raids is all fine and dandy but Blizzard clearly gives zero fucks about your demographic and the game has been perfectly fine without it. Why fix what isn't broken?

[Advent]

Most games don't last multiple decades. I will always give WoW a chance because it was a big part of my childhood, as it was for most people who have played it for over a decade. That is, unless something better comes out in the MMO category, which thus far hasn't happened.

I get that you like the game. But again, you're not doing yourself any favors. Reinforcing their design principles by continuing to give them money is not a smart decision. And FF14 does have 8-man raids as their "hardest" content so that game does exist. So does Gw2 (10man) if I recall. Other games do it, but WoW devs do not appear to want that. I wouldn't either.

[kaminaris]

Ironically, I think the game is much more social in smaller groups. Our raid team has had so many replacements over the years, especially here in BFA, I barely know anyone anymore. Raids are either "keep the coms empty", with so little room to talk when there's 19 other people also dying to talk, or it's the same 3 people talking because everybody else already gave up on being social in raid groups.

Yep, since WoD I don't even know half of raid team. There were people I literally never ever spoke to.
Joined a guild in MoP that was in a middle of transitioning from 10M -> 25M and it practically died back then.
RL tried to keep up with people leaving but eventually guild died in BRF.
Joined different guild, raided till HFC, people left.
Legion - raid team got changed twice, I don't even remember half of people from back then.
BfA - 3 guild merges till now because keeping 4 people on bench doesn't really work.

[DemonDays]

Flex Mythic has nothing to do with Blizzard being "too fucking lazy to balance it." It's impossible to balance while keeping the integrity of the raid intact. If certain raid encounters are easier with 13 people in the raid than 14, 15 or 20, then players are going to only ever bring 13 people. Conversely, if a certain encounter is easier with 30 people in the raid, then guilds will only ever bring 30 people to that encounter. Add onto this the fact that every mechanic in the raid would need to be scaleable and you're, yet again, putting the encounter design team in a restrictive box. (One which 20M Mythic was designed to eliminate.) If Flex Mythic were a thing, you'd have a sliding scale of raid sizes and the whole fucking thing would be a joke. You'd also see shit like, "WF 17-man ONLY raid team." Like, fuck right off with that noise. Mythic needs to be a fixed size to prevent this degenerate playstyle and it has nothing at all to do with "balancing." The fact that you and other people prefer smaller raids is all fine and dandy but Blizzard clearly gives zero fucks about your demographic and the game has been perfectly fine without it. Why fix what isn't broken?

Ahhh the old "degenerate playstyle" argument and Blizzard forcing you to play the game the way THEY want you to. Because that has worked oh so well in BfA hasn't it.

There's a reason less than 5% of the player base participates in Mythic raiding. Hint: It isn't because it's "hard".

[Mozu]

I get that you like the game. But again, you're not doing yourself any favors. Reinforcing their design principles by continuing to give them money is not a smart decision. And FF14 does have 8-man raids as their "hardest" content so that game does exist. So does Gw2 (10man) if I recall. Other games do it, but WoW devs do not appear to want that. I wouldn't either.

Yeah, FF14 has made many smart decisions such as raid size. That alone isn't enough to get me away from the investment I've made in my WoW account. Luckily for me, I'm able to vote for decisions with my wallet even if I buy the game because of subscriptions. The initial cost pales in comparison to them missing out on 2 years of subs from me if the expansion turns out to be bad.

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Ahhh the old "degenerate playstyle" argument and Blizzard forcing you to play the game the way THEY want you to. Because that has worked oh so well in BfA hasn't it.

There's a reason less than 5% of the player base participates in Mythic raiding. Hint: It isn't because it's "hard".

His argument hinges on the game "being perfectly fine" which is the entire argued point. It isn't fine to a lot of people.

[kaminaris]

Flex Mythic has nothing to do with Blizzard being "too fucking lazy to balance it." It's impossible to balance while keeping the integrity of the raid intact. If certain raid encounters are easier with 13 people in the raid than 14, 15 or 20, then players are going to only ever bring 13 people. Conversely, if a certain encounter is easier with 30 people in the raid, then guilds will only ever bring 30 people to that encounter. Add onto this the fact that every mechanic in the raid would need to be scaleable and you're, yet again, putting the encounter design team in a restrictive box. (One which 20M Mythic was designed to eliminate.) If Flex Mythic were a thing, you'd have a sliding scale of raid sizes and the whole fucking thing would be a joke. You'd also see shit like, "WF 17-man ONLY raid team." Like, fuck right off with that noise. Mythic needs to be a fixed size to prevent this degenerate playstyle and it has nothing at all to do with "balancing." The fact that you and other people prefer smaller raids is all fine and dandy but Blizzard clearly gives zero fucks about your demographic and the game has been perfectly fine without it. Why fix what isn't broken?

That is bullshit and you know it. Of course it's possible to balance.
Guilds are not going to bring just exact amount of people , there will be always some room for flexibility.
Like there is now, you can see different compositions on some bosses like guilds bringing one more healer or one less healer.
It all depends on your setup. If you have godlike healers you can squeeze one dps more.
Same can be seen with pugs and how varied are comps there.

Also nobody forces you to join a guild that just parrots what everyone else does.
If I had 11 amazing people, and flex-mythic would be a thing I would still bring them all instead of forcibly trying to reduce rooster just because it MIGHT have been easier with 10.

So that absolute and utter bullshit that can be disregarded immediately.

Mythic DOESN'T need to be fixed size. That is pure laziness, blizzard doesn't give a fuck because mythic raiders are niche so nobody gives a fuck about 1% of playerbase. Might as well remove mythic difficulty completely and overall playerbase wouldn't loose too much players ayways.

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Ahhh the old "degenerate playstyle" argument and Blizzard forcing you to play the game the way THEY want you to. Because that has worked oh so well in BfA hasn't it.

There's a reason less than 5% of the player base participates in Mythic raiding. Hint: It isn't because it's "hard".

Damn i never thought I agree with you. But you are completely right. Blizzard doesn't like when players don't play how they imagined it.
Anything that has been advantageous to players that blizzard didn't thought was insta nerfed. Like failure of nzoth world first race and many other stuff.
But when something is hindering players it usually takes couple of patches to lift a finger.

[Relapses]

There's a reason less than 5% of the player base participates in Mythic raiding. Hint: It isn't because it's "hard".

There's a reason this doesn't fucking matter.

Hint: It's because it doesn't fucking matter.

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Mythic DOESN'T need to be fixed size. That is pure laziness, blizzard doesn't give a fuck because mythic raiders are niche so nobody gives a fuck about 1% of playerbase. Might as well remove mythic difficulty completely and overall playerbase wouldn't loose too much players ayways.

"I don't like this so they should remove it if they don't make it the way I think is best."

Brilliant line of reasoning, my dude.

[Vulgrym]

"Flexible Mythic" is a non-starter, for a variety of reasons.

The biggest one is that tuning is impossible. The devs can barely keep a strict-format tuned adequately enough to sustain a consistent and smoothly-scaling experience through a whole tier. More importantly, I can guarantee you that a variable raid size would only introduce a break-point meta that calculates a sweet spot. Not only would that make the meta 10x more toxic and unbearable than it already is, but it's not practical in terms of the effort required on Blizz's part (i.e. they're not going to scale up their raid team dramatically to support this idea).

I can sympathize with a smaller fixed format option that's more casual. Some of my fondest memories were doing this with some friends in WotLK. Not sure there's room between Heroic and that though, and in a game that has over 30 specs to cram into limited raid spots, it's not realistic to have such a raid at the top end. The drama over how many specs weren't 'viable' for an optimal 10 man was already absurd back then, and we know balance across specs will never be perfectly harmonized.

[cparle87]

Might as well start playing the raid then. N'zoth second and fourth phase revolves around immunities which only a few classes have (mage, paladin, hunter, demon hunter).

Remember blizzard saying "bring the player, not the class" ? Then they introduce such fights and make it so each buff/debuff is provided only by a single class.

Says they introduce a fight so each buff is only provided by one class the sentence after he mentions four classes that have a buff he just used as an example.

[Nitros14]

10 mythic alongside 20 or 25 worked terribly and would be a bad idea to bring back.

They can't tune one raid size and you want them to split their attention trying to tune two?