20 man mythic recruitment killing my guild...what about you?

[Kralljin]

I couldnt give two fucks what you think about me defining what i think classic is. Its completely irrelevant to the discussion. Its literally meaningless.

So, you mentioned it, don't blame me when you say "Classic WoW", that i think you mean "Classic WoW" but actually mean "Everything before MoP" because that is for some reason "Classic WoW" to you.

In other words, if something is meaningless to this discussion, don't bring it up, let alone use a terminology that is very confusing to everyone but yourself.

As i've already said. Flex is tuned well enough now, that bringing along another good raider is better then hitting a "sweet spot". And its going to be even moreso like that when we dont have reductions in soak mechanics and such.

Flex is "tuned well" because it's undertuned, Mythic has a lot less leeway when it comes to tuning.
Normal or Heroic aren't tuned around everybody playing at their maximum, Mythic is.

Putting aside that this whole thing can turn into one giant waste of resources when nobody chooses to engage in it because it turns out much harder and everyone just proceeds to raid with 20man.

[ClassicPeon]

The problem with flexing mythic is that one way or another, that number of players in the raid will alter the difficulty in a direction, so all that encounter design goes to shit when raiding with 17 people because either much harder or much easier, they will never be able to avoid this.

The reason people subbed out guys in the past was because of breakpoints.

Take 18 ppl and you only get 3 soaks instead of 4.

With the main race being over and the rest of us casuals just progressing slowly through mythic - having 17 good people vs 16 good people wouldnt be nearly as much of a difference as having 16 good people and 1 bad vs 16 good people.

Its marginal gains you get out of that. The "much harder" comment sounds like you dont know what you are talking about but just spout things you heard from when breakpoints where a thing

- - - Updated - - -

So, you mentioned it, don't blame me when you say "Classic WoW", that i think you mean "Classic WoW" but actually mean "Everything before MoP" because that is for some reason "Classic WoW" to you.

In other words, if something is meaningless to this discussion, don't bring it up, let alone use a terminology that is very confusing to everyone but yourself.

Flex is "tuned well" because it's undertuned, Mythic has a lot less leeway when it comes to tuning.
Normal or Heroic aren't tuned around everybody playing at their maximum, Mythic is.

Putting aside that this whole thing can turn into one giant waste of resources when nobody chooses to engage in it because it turns out much harder and everyone just proceeds to raid with 20man.

I simply answered you talking about wrath and cata. Like. Come one. Leave it. Its nothing. You dont have to argue every single letter you find.

The only time you need everyone to "play their maximum" is when you are undergeared. Our entire raid is 224+ and we are beating kill timers by miles. Minmaxing isnt nessesary. We have 2 frost mages in our raid. You are speaking about something you clearly dont know anything about.

As i've already linked. There are 5000 guilds who killed sire on hc but havent stepped foot into the objectively easier shriekwing mythic. There are many guilds such as the OP's and mine who are held back by roster problems. We are even considering just not raiding anymore til next patch because we cba to pug between 2 and 6 people each week.

[Doffen]

lol... last guild i joined that called itself semi hardcore ended up being full of shit players... the gm had no clue about healing either... "why is your healing so low?"... because you bring too many healers to the fight and people are using their cds when they shouldn't... like i'm going to do salvation and suddenly resto druid tranquility and the monk uses their raid wide heal... why even have me use a 12 min cd if 2 other healing cds are going to go out at the same time?

i am so done with those people who don't understand the game they're playing... for that guild to get anywhere they would need to replace like 75% of the roster...

I am in a heroic ultra casual guild and even we have healing cd rotations. Then again we are a few that did raid hardcore in the past and have that mentality.

It is often like you describe and it is so evident that so many so called mythic raiders and guilds have been boosted by power and gear the last two expansions and realize this aint the case anymore.

So doing it properly is something many players don't understand and fail to realize that mythic raids requires some coordination. Being a mythic raider=/= skilled at the game. It is an eye opener lmao.

[VinceVega]

20 player is fine. Even low pop realms manage to recruit enough players to their roster. If you can't... maybe your recruitment is just bad?
Also restricting it to 20 players exactly makes balancing way easier and doesnt't fuck up rtwf (yeah yeah i know, nobody cares, elitest jerks blablabla)

In raids there is always a breakpoint where you get one less of an ability. If it would be with one boss at 11 players and another at 17 you need a weird amount of people and sometimes many people who have to rotate or don't play at all during progress.

Mythic is not heroic. It is harder obviously. Most of the time you take every advantage you need. So if the boss gets considerably easier with less players most guild will resort to that to kill the boss in the first round.
With 20 fixed that won't happen. You need 20 players and it will always stay that way. You probably have 3-5 people overhang.

tldr: There are more than enough players on nearly every realm. If players constantly leave your raid maybe look at why they are leaving? Maybe it is you? Or someone in your raid. Or your organisation puts players off.

[Wheeler]

Is the content too difficult for the average player?

Yes. It is.

Not an issue when the game is fresh and everyone's playing - you'll find bodies. When the game is losing subscribers the first guilds to die are the middle-to-low-end Mythic raid guilds. Why would they bang their head against the wall with your guild when an established one is also struggling to find a full time 20 man roster and is willing to take lesser players to fill it?

Easy solution would be to make this content easier so it's accessible to many more people, but the 3-4% of raiders that actually clear this content scream VERY LOUDLY about protecting that.

[ClassicPeon]

Yes. It is.

Not an issue when the game is fresh and everyone's playing - you'll find bodies. When the game is losing subscribers the first guilds to die are the middle-to-low-end Mythic raid guilds. Why would they bang their head against the wall with your guild when an established one is also struggling to find a full time 20 man roster and is willing to take lesser players to fill it?

Easy solution would be to make this content easier so it's accessible to many more people, but the 3-4% of raiders that actually clear this content scream VERY LOUDLY about protecting that.

Having content that is beyond the reach of some(skillwise) isnt a problem. The problem is, as you said, when you have a game thats arguably very, very slowly dying and still trying to maintain the game as if the same amount of people where playing and kept playing.

Wow's current subscribers vary insanely from patch to patch(much more so then it used to).

We usually start a tier with 35 ppl and have to tell some people to go raid elsewhere. And now we are down to 16-20 people each week.

Edit:

Also i have an idea that some of the people screaming the loudest are the people who have literally 0 stake in this. Some of the people in this thread for example. Citing outdated sites, using outdated arguments and such

[Accendor]

I would disagree. Granted I am only 9/10 M, but as a DPS it just seems I am hitting a sponge until it breaks. I play a retri, but even my blessings are not in dire need cause there is always enough other utilities that makes mine not needed.

Then you are getting hardcarried by your guild, which is fair enough.

[Relapses]

Having content that is beyond the reach of some(skillwise) isnt a problem. The problem is, as you said, when you have a game thats arguably very, very slowly dying and still trying to maintain the game as if the same amount of people where playing and kept playing.

Wow's current subscribers vary insanely from patch to patch(much more so then it used to).

We usually start a tier with 35 ppl and have to tell some people to go raid elsewhere. And now we are down to 16-20 people each week.

"WoW is dying" is such a laughably silly argument that it's hard to believe that after 16 years it's still the only thing people can think to support their position that {x feature} needs to change because, well, without the change it'll surely die. This time. For sure. Okay, believe me. Look, my friends list is emptier! And I asked like 3 guildies and they all agreed with me!

Come on.

Not to mention this idea you have of keeping Mythic at 20M until the end of Hall of Fame is laughably silly for a number of reasons:

1.) It would require that all encounters be designed with flex scaling in mind. Even if 20M is the "default state," the fact that the instance suddenly becomes flexible at some indeterminate point in the future requires that the encounters be designed with this in mind.

2.) Because Flex raids are inherently more/less difficulty at certain breakpoints, players will find the "optimal" breakpoint for each encounter and only ever bring the people necessary. Can you imagine getting Hall of Fame one week then having to bench half your fucking roster the next week because certain encounters are easier on 10M? This is stupid.

3.) Class representation in a small raid will matter even more. Got a one-trick Frost Mage? 26 weeks into the raid that doesn't matter much for a casual guild on 20M. But on 10M, if that same player isn't playing the "optimal" spec, the difference in DPS will be felt and it's far more likely that this player would simply be benched. The result? You'd see just as many people who currently bitch about 10M not existing instead bitching that "Blizzard sucks at tuning" because they failed to design raid encounters around the fact that many players do not play at the 90+ percentile.

4.) This is an important fact that most people either conveniently "forget," or, more likely, is the actual reason they want 10M/smaller raids to exist in the first place. Throughout Cata/MoP there was an emergence of "casual hardcore" raiding guilds. These were 10M guilds that had no intention of clearing the raid and instead wanted to kill the "easy bosses" and call it a day. This phenomena wasn't nearly as prevalent on 25M because you couldn't realistically PuG the easy bosses and the requirement of maintaining a larger roster naturally lent itself to a progression mentality. Blizzard clearly wants endgame raiding to be progression oriented and did not like the fact that "casual hardcore" guilds existed in the first place. 20M does not suffer from this problem for the same reason 25M didn't.

5.) Smaller raids simply do not achieve the aesthetic Blizzard wants in a raid environment. Blizzard likes to design raids around a large group of players taking on massive lore characters. It does not feel the same when you have a massive room that has barely used real estate because there are so few players in the raid.

10M/flex raiding simply is not an option. End of story.

[ClassicPeon]

"WoW is dying" is such a laughably silly argument that it's hard to believe that after 16 years it's still the only thing people can think to support their position that {x feature} needs to change because, well, without the change it'll surely die. This time. For sure. Okay, believe me. Look, my friends list is emptier! And I asked like 3 guildies and they all agreed with me!

Come on.

Not to mention this idea you have of keeping Mythic at 20M until the end of Hall of Fame is laughably silly for a number of reasons:

1.) It would require that all encounters be designed with flex scaling in mind. Even if 20M is the "default state," the fact that the instance suddenly becomes flexible at some indeterminate point in the future requires that the encounters be designed with this in mind.

2.) Because Flex raids are inherently more/less difficulty at certain breakpoints, players will find the "optimal" breakpoint for each encounter and only ever bring the people necessary. Can you imagine getting Hall of Fame one week then having to bench half your fucking roster the next week because certain encounters are easier on 10M? This is stupid.

3.) Class representation in a small raid will matter even more. Got a one-trick Frost Mage? 26 weeks into the raid that doesn't matter much for a casual guild on 20M. But on 10M, if that same player isn't playing the "optimal" spec, the difference in DPS will be felt and it's far more likely that this player would simply be benched. The result? You'd see just as many people who currently bitch about 10M not existing instead bitching that "Blizzard sucks at tuning" because they failed to design raid encounters around the fact that many players do not play at the 90+ percentile.

4.) This is an important fact that most people either conveniently "forget," or, more likely, is the actual reason they want 10M/smaller raids to exist in the first place. Throughout Cata/MoP there was an emergence of "casual hardcore" raiding guilds. These were 10M guilds that had no intention of clear the raid and instead wanted to kill the "easy bosses" and call it a day. This phenomena wasn't nearly as prevalent on 25M because you couldn't realistically PuG the easy bosses and the requirement of maintaining a larger roster naturally lent itself to a progression mentality. Blizzard clearly wants endgame raiding to be progression oriented and did not like the fact that "casual hardcore" guilds existed in the first place. 20M does not suffer from this problem for the same reason 25M didn't.

5.) Smaller raids simply do not achieve the aesthetic Blizzard wants in a raid environment. Blizzard likes to design raids around a large group of players taking on massive lore characters. It does not feel the same when you have a massive room that has barely used real estate because there are so few players in the raid.

10M/flex raiding simply is not an option. End of story.

Eh ok i'l bite.

In no way did i argue "they must do this or wow is sure to die". Subscribers are going down though. And has been for a long time now. So i'm not sure what your point is unless its that an mmo doesnt need subs to be alive?

Anyway sure- I'l remove the its very, very slowly dying remark. I'l take that back and just say "its slowly loosing subscribers". If that makes you feel better.

Name 1 encounter in castle nathria that would have to be redesigned.

Also i've already said - dont make breakpoints. Literally. Dont change the amount of soaks and so on - just make people deal with it or die.

You could at least read my arguments before auming shit

[Relapses]

Eh ok i'l bite.

In no way did i argue "they must do this or wow is sure to die". Subscribers are going down though. And has been for a long time now. So i'm not sure what your point is unless its that an mmo doesnt need subs to be alive?

Anyway sure- I'l remove the its very, very slowly dying remark. I'l take that back and just say "its slowly loosing subscribers". If that makes you feel better.

Name 1 encounter in castle nathria that would have to be redesigned.

Also i've already said - dont make breakpoints. Literally. Dont change the amount of soaks and so on - just make people deal with it or die.

You could at least read my arguments before auming shit

Subscribers may be down but all available data suggestions that Mythic raid participation is up (at least from where it was 8.3). There are fewer guilds clearing Nathria but that likely has more to do with the encounters being more tightly tuned than it does actual participation. (In 8.3 Corruption was a very powerful "soft nerf" to the raid. CN does not have this luxury.) Your suggestion to "not make breakpoints" is silly because there are so many different breakpoints that can straight up be invalidated by having more/less people that it's impossible to list. Think Mythic Blast Furnace. How in the actual fuck would you flex an encounter like that? The solution shouldn't be "just don't design Blast Furnace."

I go back to the question I've asked many times throughout this thread: Why bother changing something that clearly isn't broken? Yes, you will find no shortage of players who are very willing to make long, passionate love letters to the days of 10M Heroic raiding but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best thing for the game. Mythic raid participation does not need to be at all time highs in order for the game to be successful. There is no "trickle-down" effect from more people clearing Mythic. To me, it seems like entitlement from people who failed to defeat the recruitment boss and instead of asking introspective questions about the actual reasons they failed to recruit for their guild would instead like to blame Blizzard for failing to design endgame raiding around smaller raid sizes.

[Woobels]

I'm pretty sure some of the people claiming Mythic should be removed from the game have been complaining about this (on this very forum) since at least early MoP. Kind of surprising to me to see they're still going at it, same exact arguments too.

Fwiw I think Blizzard should "read the room" better and perhaps be more heavy handed/consistent with nerfing Mythic raid content after a certain period of time, people claiming Mythic should be removed/go 10 man/go flex are insane but I don't think it's too outlandish to claim it's too difficult relative to the current playerbase/late patch playerbase.

Most good players have had their fill and would probably welcome easier/faster farming, a vocal minority still progressing on SLG or something might claim they don't want their accomplishment robbed by nerfs but they should probably realize that there's no accomplishment left at this point, and the great majority of people stuck on those bosses would likely welcome it.

[ClassicPeon]

Subscribers may be down but all available data suggestions that Mythic raid participation is up (at least from where it was 8.3). There are fewer guilds clearing Nathria but that likely has more to do with the encounters being more tightly tuned than it does actual participation. (In 8.3 Corruption was a very powerful "soft nerf" to the raid. CN does not have this luxury.) Your suggestion to "not make breakpoints" is silly because there are so many different breakpoints that can straight up be invalidated by having more/less people that it's impossible to list. Think Mythic Blast Furnace. How in the actual fuck would you flex an encounter like that? The solution shouldn't be "just don't design Blast Furnace."

I go back to the question I've asked many times throughout this thread: Why bother changing something that clearly isn't broken? Yes, you will find no shortage of players who are very willing to make long, passionate love letters to the days of 10M Heroic raiding but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best thing for the game. Mythic raid participation does not need to be at all time highs in order for the game to be successful. There is no "trickle-down" effect from more people clearing Mythic. To me, it seems like entitlement from people who failed to defeat the recruitment boss and instead of asking introspective questions about the actual reasons they failed to recruit for their guild would instead like to blame Blizzard for failing to design endgame raiding around smaller raid sizes.

What data suggest that mythic participation is up?

And once again, name an encounter in castle nathria that would have to be redesigned?

[psyquest]

Recruitment is a pain and any guild that hasnt cleared the raid in mythic yet will struggle or fold. This has always been true previously and today it is more of an issue because many players have quit.

Good luck. I am in the same boat with only 22 players in the roster currently. Things are desperately tight. Need to clear the last boss and rest my troops.

[Xires]

I don't know what the solution could be, but recruiting 20+ people for core and bench is starting to look like an impossible task at this very moment. I would even speculate it's easier to recruit 40 people in classic than it is to recruit 20 people for mythic in retail at the moment, and that's quite ridiculous.

My solution proposal would be obvious, reduce the number of people required for mythic content. 15? 10? again, this is the only thing I can really think of, as making mythic content scale-like LFR, normal, and heroic does would just be a balancing nightmare.

We are on a "full" pop server, US Thrall with plenty of people. The problem is related to not enough talent being out there to fill the roles. Is the content too difficult for the average player? is Raider.IO part of the problem? again, I don't know what the solution could possibly be, but there's definitely something going on with recruitment that is making it really hard to make a consistent roster.

Just....no, dude. Then we'll have people like you demanding 5 man mythic raids. Just...no.

[ClassicPeon]

Just....no, dude. Then we'll have people like you demanding 5 man mythic raids. Just...no.

Oh come on man. Why is it people cant make convincing arguments but just go full logical fallacy on this site

[Xires]

10man>>>>>>>>20man

More personal responsibility, more emphasis on actual gameplay and less on garbage logistics. I don't care if people think more people feels more epic. Recruiting is terrible.


I'm sure you'll get the contrarians that come in and be like pffft just recruit harder or be better so people wanna join your guild loser because that's all people in this forum do. rofl

we've dropped from 40 to 25 and then to 20. How about we just get to where you people wanna take this and demand 5 man mythic raiding. Because people will bitch that 10 people is too hard to recruit. 20 man isn't hard to recruit...but when the game is in a shitty and boring state....you'll find it hard for people to even want to log on...let alone raid.

[Bee76]

expansion hoppers destroy multiple guilds each time, your guild is just another victim.

This is the core problem i think. I totally agree. There are way to much ppl, that join a guild raid some time, stop raiding/playing and then let down their guild. When they chose to play again they search another guild and repeat that "game".

The solution is simple:
Never join a new formed guild, no matter how "successful" they are right now in mythic. Most new formed guilds break after 1-2 tiers.
And if your recruiting, just dont take people with long "playing downtimes".

That worked fine for my guild for a long time.

SL is something special. A lot of my guild mates are so pissed/annoyed/bored by SL/the gearing mechanic/the raid that they take breaks/stop playing wow at all. Players that play together for many (5+) years. We got some players that are still subbed due to loyalty reasons. I am one of those. The only reason im still subbed is the guild and my guildmates.
But really, we got way more ppl playing in the last weeks of 8.3 than now. Im just speaking for my guild/my direct experiences, but SL is something "special" for us. In a non healthy way

[Kralljin]

I simply answered you talking about wrath and cata. Like. Come one. Leave it. Its nothing. You dont have to argue every single letter you find.

It's not really about arguing about the letter when you use extremely confusing terminology.

I'm sorry, but that's on you, you for some reason felt to insert your own, frankly rather odd, definition of "Classic WoW", don't be surprised when people stumble over it.

The only time you need everyone to "play their maximum" is when you are undergeared. Our entire raid is 224+ and we are beating kill timers by miles. Minmaxing isnt nessesary. We have 2 frost mages in our raid. You are speaking about something you clearly dont know anything about.

Yes, forget all about those nerfs, powergains via soulbinds, class buffs, those are irrelevant - or that such a change would still very much affect people before any of this has taken place.

As i've already linked. There are 5000 guilds who killed sire on hc but havent stepped foot into the objectively easier shriekwing mythic.

I'd argue that has more to do with the fact that some people cannot be arsed to step into Mythic, they got their Ahead of the Curve, they're done for this tier.

Not everybody wants to complete the game on multiple difficulties, some do it on Normal and are done, some on Heroic and are done - putting aside that your suggestion has the massive hole "oops, this encounter may be extremely punishing towards guilds with fewer than 20 people and have to learn it the hard way".

If Blizzard presents an option to tackle Mythic with fewer people, then it needs to have an adequate difficulty and not just have massive difficulty spikes because the devs bothered enough to implement a "solution" but not enough to make it a working one.

[Weeps]

As someone who has experience raiding since Vanilla, 40 mans, 10 mans, 15, 20, 25, etc

Raiding recruitment has always been a problem for mythic or high end content. We all are aware of that.

I agree with people who say there are too many guilds. Too many people wanting to be leaders. The best thing to do is break up and join other guilds if your guild cannot find success recruiting.

The reason I suggest break up rather than merging.... is that merging rarely ever worked out in my experience. I've done 3 guild merges and they've all failed. The only ones that work are the sister guilds that help fill up roster.

Personally, I always began searching for a new guild when the guild I'm in does not offer what I'm seeking.

[shise]

Mythic is just fine as it is, some guilds are just not made to go far in mythic raiding as there is always a point where the players are just not skilled enough to clear the content while its current. Mythic raiding is too difficult for average players as its not desinged to be done by them, flex mythic would just not work as some fights would be easier and some would be harder so you would still need a certain amount of players so you could do the content as easy as possible.

You speak like mythic takes additional skills or something lol.
It is about wanting to do it. You still press the same buttons, but you need to know tactics very well and be very aware of mechanics. So, in short, you need to be willing to put the effort into it. Skills are the same really.
In fact, a lot of mythic raiders right now are casual players: log in for the raid, farm couple of things and see you next week.

Mythic is designed for all players, it is the players who decide if they want to do it or not.

- - - Updated - - -

As someone who has experience raiding since Vanilla, 40 mans, 10 mans, 15, 20, 25, etc

Raiding recruitment has always been a problem for mythic or high end content. We all are aware of that.

I agree with people who say there are too many guilds. Too many people wanting to be leaders. The best thing to do is break up and join other guilds if your guild cannot find success recruiting.

The reason I suggest break up rather than merging.... is that merging rarely ever worked out in my experience. I've done 3 guild merges and they've all failed. The only ones that work are the sister guilds that help fill up roster.

Personally, I always began searching for a new guild when the guild I'm in does not offer what I'm seeking.

I agree. Guild merging is hard to accomplish, just like companies merging is in real life.

You have a lot of different views, values, opinions, ways... you can put the effort, but eventually something gives in.