I thought we left the mindset that raiding is better than everything else back in WoD

[Yarathir]

You’re wrong. A +15 key is piss easy. I did +15 keys in the beginning of 8.3 with 445 gear and it was still easy.

Whatever you say. Heroic raiding is still far easier.

[Kaver]

It's not though, that's conflating two things. Telling people they don't "need" the gear is irrelevant to most players, because most players aren't motivated by seeking a challenge in the first place. They just want to be powerful because that's how RPGs work.

That doesn't mean they should get what they want, though! I agree with the basic philosophy of gearing. I just feel like the aforementioned argument is a silly way to approach the issue. Don't tell people they shouldn't want the gear - tell them they don't deserve it. :P

I agree. But I think the “..you don’t even need it” argument starts to occur once people start to make up all kinds of crazy excuses for why they do believe that they deserve mythic gear even though they only do content of low challenge.

- - - Updated - - -

Whatever you say. Heroic raiding is still far easier.

Both is easy. There is absolutely nothing impressive about doing a +15 keys even with bad gear. So I say you’re wrong. You don’t deserve anything special for your “accomplishment”.

[Yarathir]

Both is easy. There is absolutely nothing impressive about doing a +15 keys even with bad gear. So I say you’re wrong. You don’t deserve anything special for your “accomplishment”.

One is easier, actually. B)

Also go off at your strawman, I guess, random person.

[attias]

The thing I don't see anyone pointing out is that it is objectively harder getting 9-19 other people on the same page than it is 2-4 other people (including ALL smaller group content).

If you don't incentivize that with player power growth, people won't bother doing it due to path-of-least-resistance optimization.

Mythic+ is it's own challenge and has it's own hurdles to overcome and group dynamic is important but I'd argue that raiding is harder simply due to logistics.


An easy/simple model to describe this:

Conditionals:
1. At the top level, hardest difficulty, the player base, on average, has a 50% chance to do an insta-group-wipe mechanic correctly on 5 man, and an 80% chance to do the mechanic correctly on 20 man.
2. To kill the encounter, everyone has to do this mechanic once successfully.


In a 5 man environment, this can be looked at as:
50% = .5
(.5)^5 = .03125 = 3.125%
In this theoretical example, this 5 man group would have approximately a 3.125% chance of success.

Now, let's say the developers thought they should tune back the design a touch, and give players an 80% chance to succeed for Mythic 20 man raiding.
80% = .8
(.8)^20 = 0.01153 = 1.153%

So despite the content being nerfed to be easier, Mythic raiders are looking at less than half the chance of success due from sheer player volume.

This is why Mythic raiders always have access to the best gear- remove the reward structure and you may as well remove raiding altogether as the meta will shift and optimization-focused players will completely ignore it.

[Kaver]

One is easier, actually. B)

Also go off at your strawman, I guess, random person.

“go off at your strawman”?... what?

[deenman]

"why don't raiders see that": because they are idiots
"and apparently the dev team": because the game director is a raider. see above

if you dont like raiding maybe wow isnt for you,i wish they would bring back wrath/cata pvp system and gearing,but that doesnt look like its happening....so...not much left than to play something else,i dont know if you realise,but its ok to stop playing wow and playing something else

[Tyris Flare]

At the start of the season, 15 keys are probably harder than a lot of heroic bosses, but that's because raids are designed for like 3 bosses to instantly fall over and another 3 to barely require a pulse. The final boss(es) are typically dramatically harder than 15s though.

This patch has been out for so long (and corruption has changed the normal rules so much) that I think it can skew everyone's perspective a bit

[Spiffums]

Because of how M+ works, it doesn't work.

M+ offers a massive lootpool (virtually any item that drops off a 5man boss), which gives you almost any potential stat combination (which is the only value items have besides raw Ilvl), can be repeated as many times as you like and is on top of that far easier to organize than raids.

In comparison, PvP used to work off a weekly Arena / Conquest points, those essentially emulated the weekly lockout of raids, M+ however is a "shake as often as you like" type of source that can give a decent item for virtually any slot.

M+ cannot coexist in its current form alongside raiding or PvP unless you bring back game mode specific stats, it quite frankly resembles something that belongs into a Loot shooter or ARPG, not an MMORPG that has everything else based on weekly lockouts.

Kinda dishonest there.......you can get any item IN THE INSTANCE that fits your loot spec. You can only spam it if you have the keys. With 1 peice of loot dropping at the end of the run there will people who won't do keys because "they never got nothing out of 5 runs".

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

It's not a mindset, it's a fact.

[Accendor]

That’s your issue. You can play some alts. There’s a lot of things to do. Just because everything isn’t about power progression on one character doesn’t mean there is less content. The game will always be worthwhile if you’re having fun. And if you only have fun in content if you get gear upgrades then that’s a you problem.

Yeah, if its not about power progression, I am really not interested. Even less interested in playing alts. I understand other people have different opinions about this, but like everyone in WoW I don't really care about others.

[NatePsy]

Well fun is the best reason. Gear is a tool, so honestly, if these changes are enough to put people off doing certain content then they're just not all that into the content in the first place, which is the real discussion to be had here.

Now take that concept and apply it to raiding where gear is concerned, I guess they're just not all into that content in the first place

[Yarathir]

“go off at your strawman”?... what?

You seem to be having a hell of a time feverishly arguing with men (and women) made of straw. I just wanted to encourage you to continue to do so if that makes you happy.

[InfiniteCharger]

So here is the choice:

A) Repeatable top end content on a fixed weekly lockout schedule giving best rewards (20 years of WOW gameplay)

B) Repeatable top end content with no lockout and "infinite" scalability and rewards (Diablo wow)

If people really want B then yes, they are basically begging Blizzard to make WOW into an MMOARPG like Diablo in a full 3d world.

[jellmoo]

While I don't disagree, what do you need the best gear if you are not tackling the best content. Like if you are not raiding you don't need anything higher than LFR. While some may do high M+, you don't need raid gear for that either, sure it helps, but it's not needed. Same with PvP, and people just doing WQs.

Except that's not true. Pushing higher and higher M+ is benefited by better gear, the same way raiding is. The effect is different, but the benefit is the same.

[arkanon]

Except that's not true. Pushing higher and higher M+ is benefited by better gear, the same way raiding is. The effect is different, but the benefit is the same.

What benifit is there in doing a +23 compared to a +15?

[unbound]

Not everyone likes to raid all the time... why don't raiders (and apparently the dev team) see that?

People see what they want to see. Raiders are focused on raiding. Some players are focused on achievements. Others on the pokemon mini-game.

The dev team almost certainly does know that not everyone likes to raid. However, it is much cheaper for them to build a handful of dungeons and roll out a single raid every 6 months or so than to provide a plethora of different options for the various players.

Just like it is much cheaper to make a handful of raids and dungeons and put in difficulty slider instead. And most of the former players can sense this cheapness even if they can't easily articulate it. This is why Retail WoW has a fraction of subscriptions compared to its heyday in Vanilla thru Wrath. With each cut in costs, the average subscription base has decreased...but the top executives rationalize the drop in subs as caused by anything other than their cost cutting measures.

Sadly, the top executives will rake in big bonuses because the financial spreadsheets have been good recently, and will likely remain good for a few more years before the entire operation folds because there just won't be anything else to cut, putting out of work thousands of employees.

[EasyE]

Raiding has been the best End game for Every MMO since its creation, dont know why all the casuals think they can change this mind set. If you cant raid tough luck, I cant play in the NBA but you don't hear me demanding anything.

[jellmoo]

So here is the choice:

A) Repeatable top end content on a fixed weekly lockout schedule giving best rewards (20 years of WOW gameplay)

B) Repeatable top end content with no lockout and "infinite" scalability and rewards (Diablo wow)

If people really want B then yes, they are basically begging Blizzard to make WOW into an MMOARPG like Diablo in a full 3d world.

Except that's just hyperbole. It doesn't have to be "this or that". It doesn't have to be so incredibly binary and absolute. It's entirely possible to have multiple pathjways to the same goal, and have them be meaningful.

[Adoxe]

The mindset never left, it was a mistake to attempt to.

[attias]

While I agree that mythic is harder than mythic+, that's really just a result of tuning. They could make m+ harder, they just haven't. It's true that more people = more chances to wipe the raid, but less people can also work to your disadvantage in m+ because you're missing cds, can't class stack, etc.

The point of the numbers I used is that you can make 5 mans harder than 20 mans but at the end of the day, 5 players working together will always be easier than 20 players no matter how hard the content is from simple logistics.


It's not a function of the game itself (IE tuning, class abilities, dps, hps, tps etc.), it's a function of the playerbase and incentivizing people to form and organize those larger groups.

You remove that incentive and raiding would die overnight.

We've seen it multiple times throughout the game's history; when they said 10 and 25 mans would drop the same loot in Cata, you suddenly saw a rise in a lot more 10 man raids than you did of 25 mans because they were easier to organize (even though the tuning was a mess, 10 mans were absolutely harder by-the-numbers than 25 mans at the time, yet there were way more 10 man raiding guilds, it's really not hard to figure out why). They had to increase the drop rates of gear in 25-man to provide more incentive for people to raid 25 mans during that era.


It's not at all hard to predict why Blizzard is reluctant to give 5 mans the best gear in the game, if they did people wouldn't bother at all with large raid groups.