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

[MrLachyG]

I often wonder why mythic raids even exist, considering their popularity. My opinion? Remove raids altogether and focus resources on content more than a hand full of people do.

according to wowprogress, 7030 guilds have cleared the first 3 on mythic while 15816 have done the same feat on heroic. that's 140,000 players for mythic and between 158,160 and 474,480 players who do heroic. they don't keep stats on normal but I am sure you could add another 2-300 thousand quite easily (probably more), and then you have the people who do LFR which again would be quite significant. but sure, let's remove raiding altogether and wave goodbye to hundreds of thousands of subs, possibly millions

[freddy090909]

I think there is merit in saying that not having a fixed raid size would heavily impact the world first race. Suddenly raid size would become an important factor in min-maxing for pushing kills. And yes, there would absolutely be a "best" size for every boss.

But, I think my response to that is: Why do we care about these very few world first raid groups at all? Design the game to be most fun for the most players. If 10m raid groups will get more people into mythic, then it would be a good thing. I know for a fact that it would get me back in (it's simply a much more manageable "friend group" size). Sure, there are some raid groups that overly min-max every little factor (even some way down the ladder), but there's also plenty of groups which do not, that simply have good players who want to play together.

- One option is Blizz could enable flex mode after the hall of fame unlocks. That would give both player groups what they want, and would give Blizzard a chance to dip their toes in the water to see how it would effect participation.

- Or, you could go back to the old 10m separation, and have it simply drop 5-10 ilvl worse gear. Heck, even make them share a lockout. There'd be no question that 20m is the "true" end game, but there would be actually challenging content for smaller groups to do (and be rewarded for).

[Mozu]

- Or, you could go back to the old 10m separation, and have it simply drop 5-10 ilvl worse gear. Heck, even make them share a lockout. There'd be no question that 20m is the "true" end game, but there would be actually challenging content for smaller groups to do (and be rewarded for).

It's this type of logic that holds 10M back in the first place. The idea that 10M should be relegated to worse gear and lesser prestige, while 20M is the "true" anything, is dumb.

[freddy090909]

It's this type of logic that holds 10M back in the first place. The idea that 10M should be relegated to worse gear and lesser prestige, while 20M is the "true" anything, is dumb.

It's just an option, considering one of the biggest arguments that people seem to be making is "Blizzard can't handle both". Obviously, I don't think it is the best solution - I'd much rather everything be equal, but in the end if it is a question of how things are today vs having a "fake" mythic mode, I'd take having >something< to do with my friends every time.

[Stabbyfists]

Am I the only one who remembered the nightmares of balancing issues in Cataclysm?

Twin Dragon's adds having the same HP as 25 mans
Halfus being Near impossible with way fewer interupts.
Class stacking just so you could get every buff (Which are coming back)
All fights being more rewarding and better use of your time on 25 man with the exception of Al'akir and Conclave

Here is a sad reality. The whole reason they did 20 man mythic is because they wanted to stop designing the fights around 10 / 25 people and didn't want the ultimate diffficulty to be flex mode. Its the truth. Also if they did bring 10 man flex mode into the game, they would have to get rid of personal loot. In order for people to still want to do 20 man mythic, they would have to eliminate personal loot and go back to 10 mans only dropping 2 - 3 items, and 20 mans dropping 4 - 6 items.

Double the players, means double the loot will drop. Why would anyone do 10 man mythics when you could potentially screw yourselves out of 3 items?

If they kept Personal loot, why would ANYONE do 20 man mythics anymore? For the challenge? the prestiege? Please, we fight for orange and purple pixels at the end of the day.

I personally do not have fond memories of 10 man guilds and 10 man raiding. So much so that I always looked for 25 man raiding guilds because while more people is harder to manage, more people means more friends and personalities in a guild and World of Warcraft at its core is a social video game. You should have to recruit and socialize with people.

[Cathbadh]

I'm still one of the ones who'd like 15m mythic as a balance between those who want 10 or 20. I've never had an issue finding 15 people. I had to server transfer my guild to get to the point where 20 is easier, only to go into an expansion where so many players quit that filling a guild on a large server is a challenge.

[DemonDays]

I think there is merit in saying that not having a fixed raid size would heavily impact the world first race. Suddenly raid size would become an important factor in min-maxing for pushing kills. And yes, there would absolutely be a "best" size for every boss.

But, I think my response to that is: Why do we care about these very few world first raid groups at all? Design the game to be most fun for the most players. If 10m raid groups will get more people into mythic, then it would be a good thing. I know for a fact that it would get me back in (it's simply a much more manageable "friend group" size). Sure, there are some raid groups that overly min-max every little factor (even some way down the ladder), but there's also plenty of groups which do not, that simply have good players who want to play together.

- One option is Blizz could enable flex mode after the hall of fame unlocks. That would give both player groups what they want, and would give Blizzard a chance to dip their toes in the water to see how it would effect participation.

- Or, you could go back to the old 10m separation, and have it simply drop 5-10 ilvl worse gear. Heck, even make them share a lockout. There'd be no question that 20m is the "true" end game, but there would be actually challenging content for smaller groups to do (and be rewarded for).

I wasn't aware that 99.9% of the playerbase was participating in the World First Race.

Oh wait. They aren't.

The world race is the nichest of the niche'. MMO "e-sports" are already a pathetically small niche market. Then you throw a player vs AI monster race in there on top?

Tell me why this is a priority again?

[nocturnus]

according to wowprogress, 7030 guilds have cleared the first 3 on mythic while 15816 have done the same feat on heroic. that's 140,000 players for mythic and between 158,160 and 474,480 players who do heroic. they don't keep stats on normal but I am sure you could add another 2-300 thousand quite easily (probably more), and then you have the people who do LFR which again would be quite significant. but sure, let's remove raiding altogether and wave goodbye to hundreds of thousands of subs, possibly millions

Let's assume that your numbers are accurate and that there aren't any other variables in play (split runs, alt guids, double class runs, etc). Rounding up in your favour, that would mean that about 7.1% of wow's playerbase is active in heroic raiding and partial (3 boss) mythic raiding.

Honestly? I think they'd gain much more than they'd lose, if they stopped throwing resources towards a feature that barely anyone uses.

You'd lose a lot more then just the raiders if you did that. Raiding gets plenty of use thanks to LFR, it's why it was put in in the first place.

I prefer smaller groups, I tried 20 man mythic in wod, wasn't for me. I dealt with the bigger groups from Vanilla through Wrath, 10 man was a godsend, less drama and more personal responsibility.

Too bad heroic is too easy, so I quit raiding, and basically playing all together for the most part. (M+ is fine for the first patch, but it doesn't change enough to make it interesting to run the SAME dungeons for 2 years.)

RFL, ain't that a can of worms. Technically it's raiding, yes. Practically? It's a clusterfuck chore that I doubt (yes, yes, gut feeling here) anyone actually enjoys. I also have the feeling that LFR was only introduced to justify pumping resources into raid development.

The conversation might have gone something like this: "Guys, you're wasting too much time and resources on a feature too few people do. Cut it out, now." - "Okay guys, let's copy/paste the raid, remove everything that makes the raid remotely interesting so a blind raccoon could complete it and show the new participation numbers." "wow, 24% participation, up from 2%! Okay, keep it!"

[nexellent]

thats not unpopular lol 10 man is superior to both 25 man and 20 man for high end content

[lockyer]

A fixed raid size for mythic is ideal, a solution to the reduced playerbase would be to reduce the number of players required to do mythic raiding.
Whether this number is 10, 15, or 16.5, is up to the devs...
20 is potentially too high given the current playerbase, at least in oceanic region.

[nocturnus]

thats not unpopular lol 10 man is superior to both 25 man and 20 man for high end content

Superior in what way? What does it even mean in this context, "superior"? You're not making any sense.

[Dangg]

Is this even unpopular? The only reason this isn't a thing is balancing/tuning for the World First race, which is entirely irrelevant for ~99.999% of the player base.

[nocturnus]

20 Man raiding is the perfect size because you can be reasonably expected to have every class. It gives them more freedom to have interesting mechanics compared to 10 Man.

I understand why someone would say this (and not only because Blizzard said it). It does make sense, superficially. But I don't believe it.

There are examples of very interesting 5 man encounters, heck even solo encounters! So the argument "we need 20 people to make fun fights" stops being plausible very quickly.

I think there's enough evidence to support the notion that people enjoy small group content most. With mythic+, they've paved the way towards what the community wants. My only gripes with m+ are its repetitiveness and that its focal point is directed at clearing trash quickly, rather than overcoming a series of tough encounters.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I liked it way more when trash was fewer, but more powerful and/or significant. Remember, when moon unofficially meant sheep, star meant sap and square meant freeze? You know, when CC actually had value in PvE content.

If it were up to me, I'd shift the m+ focal point from clearing trash as fast as you can, to killing exponentially harder bosses. It might require more development resources, but I'm quite sure it would result in a more fun experience.

[Zyky]

The major issue with ten man raids were that mechanics had to be reworked heavily and even then most of the time certain ones became trivial due to the increased amount of player space.

I see no real benefits to trying to make mythic 10s. Flex is fine for them.

I would personally prefer a smaller raid size for Mythic, 20 often feels excessive and cluttered for no reason. As it is groups cut healers for Mythic encounters first, if it was tuned more tightly around say 15 players, you'd nearly always run 3 healers and that would create options for guilds who are struggling to recruit. It's a very unpopular opinion, however 20 is too large, I do think 10 is too few, the middle seems 15, which would probably be a nice fluid number for proper tuning.

[Protean]

This would have the largest pitfall of them all: Not a single living soul would ever want to do it.

Sounds like fun to me. Maybe you're just allergic to different opinions?

[nocturnus]

I find they should just adapt the m+ dungeons into 10man raids at the level where the loot stops getting any better anyway. It would be glorious fun and chaotic with the affixes and timers. It'd still probably fall into the same pitfalls as to why there's no mythic 10man though.

Am I correct to gather from your post that you actually think people enjoy timers and trash?

[Relapses]

No. You have the audacity to claim that it can't be changed and changing it doesn't need to be done. Therefore it is fine the way it is. Even though less than 5% of the playerbase ever touches it.

5% participation in Mythic raiding is perfectly fine -- especially when there are 3 other difficulty levels for players to choose from when it comes to raid difficulty. You're free to disagree with me but once more, if Blizzard felt the participation metrics in their content were skewed improperly we would have already seen changes made to the format. Instead, we've seen the same system carried through four expansions.

You claim all of this whilst portraying blind faith in Blizzard. Somehow knowing it is "impossible to balance". This is why you have multiple people calling you out on your bullshit.

This isn't "blind faith in Blizzard." It's me questioning why players constantly want to fix what isn't broken. Again, ironic that you're accusing me of a strawman argument while constructing a textbook example of one yourself.

This entire thread is based on improving participation in Mythic raiding. Apparently because of your blind faith in Blizzard you think it's completely fine and doesn't need any improvement. Which is basically the mantra of you people - "GAME IS FINE LOL IT DOESN'T NEED IMPROVEMENT".

Not everything this community wants is best for the game. It's easy to find pockets of players incapable of using critical thinking to explore the reasons Mythic raiding isn't more accessible on forums like this. It's super simple to have a knee-jerk reaction and say "LOL BLIZZ NVR LISTENS." And that's fine. People are free to prefer small raid sizes and try to start a "movement" to bring back 10M. I doubt this topic will ever die out completely but it always plays out the same. (This topic isn't new. I linked to a thread from four years ago where I was using the same talking points to discount the same exact arguments.) Further, if you want to label me as a "Blizzard bootlicker" because I refuse to drink the "DAE Blizz sux" Kool-Aid and make weak ass surface-level demagogic arguments you're free to do so. I really don't care that much about ad hominems -- but I will continue to challenge anybody who disagrees with me to formulate a legitimate argument in favor of small raid sizes that fully addresses the very clear downsides I've outlined in the numerous responses I've made on this topic.

The stats are there for you to see - kaminaris has told you they are there. Participation was MUCH FUCKING HIGHER when Flex was around.

I won't disagree that participation in the hardest-difficult raid content is likely down from MoP levels but that's mostly because of the prevalence of casual Heroic raiding, something that Blizzard never really wanted to have happen in the first place. The question I asked was for proof that Mythic raiding is so close teetering on the brink of self-destruction that ideas like Flex Mythic need to be explored. (Something that in my own experience I see no evidence to support.) Also, for the record, if you make a claim in an argument, the onus isn't on the person who is disagreeing with you to find the evidence.

- - - Updated - - -

Sounds like fun to me. Maybe you're just allergic to different opinions?

I'm allergic to opinions about things that have zero chance of becoming reality. It's like people who complain about the meta in the MDI suggesting that Blizzard just force players to play random class/specs. Sure, it'd be funny as fuck for the viewers but the actual players participating in the tournament would fucking hate it and the change would effectively disintegrate the current community almost instantaneously.

[ShaanuJaanu]

Of fucking course it does matter. Because in 20 man group you will have twice as much chance of some personal issues between raiders.
And half the chance of all people liking each other.

And no examples are good, you need to read them again.

Right now you have 22-25 people on rooster. That means if you ever fall below 20 you cancel damn raid.
Having flex 10-20 means you can even have 15 people and still go on even if 5 of them are missing assuming you have those two healers.
And falling below 20 people doesn't automatically mean raid canceled.

what a joke, so your 10 man raid team requires 50% more bench, while 20 man raid has 10% more bench? dogshit comparison again.

10 man raid teams with 12 ppl will feel the same roster issues that a 20 man roster with 24 ppl feel.

keep ignoring the fact that 10 man raids are nothing but half of a 20 man raid team.

Flex is not even a question, youd be stupid to think flex would be a viable option, when you can never make competitive raid with FLEX options, not before, not now, not ever.

- - - Updated - - -

Because he is correct and you are wrong. You just don't have any sensible argument against 10 mans. Zero, null.
"It can't be balanced" is factually incorrect. Blizzard doesn't have skills to balanced it might be somewhat valid.
You just wall yourself with "because i trust blizzard". Well, it never worked. So there is absolutely no reason this time it will be different.

Mythic raiding has been changed a lot recently. There is no reason to think this time will be different.



No it's really not. I've been checking roughly how many guilds have been clearing full mythic raids and at the very best, we have 1/5 of what was in MoP.
Sadly wowprogress shows some garbage data so you would have to find it yourself (as in showing guilds full clear after cutting edge was removed).

Actually there are way more competitive guilds now than there ever was, go look for your own data. HERP DERP.

if blizzard can't balance 10vs20, then you have no argument, he is right. It CANNOT BE BALANCED, it never was. never will. Its not like you can jump in blizzard and pilot their raid team where everything is balanced for 10v20, you have no proof it can be balanced, while there is plenty of proof why it didnt work in the past.

[Levogames]

Not unpopular, also needed.
I can't with the 25man hardmode but kicking 5 of them in order to make the same shitshow but with less people.
10man was the right difficulty for the skilled players.

[Gorsameth]

I would personally prefer a smaller raid size for Mythic, 20 often feels excessive and cluttered for no reason. As it is groups cut healers for Mythic encounters first, if it was tuned more tightly around say 15 players, you'd nearly always run 3 healers and that would create options for guilds who are struggling to recruit. It's a very unpopular opinion, however 20 is too large, I do think 10 is too few, the middle seems 15, which would probably be a nice fluid number for proper tuning.

no, guilds will always cut healers first even if you try to tune fights tightly to require X number. If you design a fight in such a way that Method/Limit NEEDS to use 3 healers everyone else needs 4 or 5. Skill differences are to big to handle that.

I again point you to the insanity that was the world first 10m Garrosh kill being solo healed. Something that was thought to be impossible at the time.
The solution to 'more dps' is always to cut healers and make dps play better at avoiding damage.