Raids Are Important, Even If You Never See Them

[Adamas102]

Clearly... It's that or its somehow tiring to have people desperately try to explain how most classes having 70% of their total population being the best performing covenant or having them split across 2 near performing covenants doesnt prove a trend.

An honest question... why is it so hard for a lot of posters here to let go of the fact the average wow player by definition only seems to play what is meta? Why is that such a bitter pill to swallow?

If people where honest with that we might of avoided at least a few pitfalls over the past few expansions but instead they cling to this weird ideal that players want choice?

Let's be clear we are simply being anal about how massive the majority is...

You really just don’t see how your personal bias and misunderstanding of the data is clouding the issue, huh?

Here’s a simple question: before patch 9.1.5 about 82% of unholy death knights picked Necrolord. Of that 82% can you tell us how many picked it strictly based on the meta, how many picked it because it seemed to fit the class/spec aesthetic, how many picked it because they liked the abilities regardless of power, how many picked it because of the cosmetics (armor and/or mount), and how many picked it because they liked the zone.

When you can give us a true and accurate breakdown of how people picked their covenant instead of just based on your assumptions then maybe we’ll take you more seriously.

[Candlewick]

You really just don’t see how your personal bias and misunderstanding of the data is clouding the issue, huh?

Here’s a simple question: before patch 9.1.5 about 82% of unholy death knights picked Necrolord. Of that 82% can you tell us how many picked it strictly based on the meta, how many picked it because it seemed to fit the class/spec aesthetic, how many picked it because they liked the abilities regardless of power, how many picked it because of the cosmetics (armor and/or mount), and how many picked it because they liked the zone.

When you can give us a true and accurate breakdown of how people picked their covenant instead of just based on your assumptions then maybe we’ll take you more seriously.

Why is this trend repeated without question and without variation across all popular specs with exceptions only being found with odd outliners like holy priests then?

The only time we see any kind of notable variation within meta specs is when the covenant offers roughly the same level of power.

It's time to let go... accept that after over 15 years the player base has a set way they want to experience the game.

[NineSpine]

Im sorry but what FF14 mechanics are a joke and so easy. They are lfr level difficult at every lvl of game play in FF14. Any game that has 5 to 7 second huge graphic indicators is badly designed for slow players.

Then why don’t the world first wow raiders who are doing ff14 progress agree with you?

[Soon-TM]

Then why don’t the world first wow raiders who are doing ff14 progress agree with you?

Bro, @Utrrabbit knows better than any WF raider in this game with 18M subscribers he loves to play

[NineSpine]

Clearly... It's that or its somehow tiring to have people desperately try to explain how most classes having 70% of their total population being the best performing covenant or having them split across 2 near performing covenants doesnt prove a trend.

An honest question... why is it so hard for a lot of posters here to let go of the fact the average wow player by definition only seems to play what is meta? Why is that such a bitter pill to swallow?

If people where honest with that we might of avoided at least a few pitfalls over the past few expansions but instead they cling to this weird ideal that players want choice?

Let's be clear we are simply being anal about how massive the majority is...

The average is 59%, not 70%z. But math is just an anti-meta conspiracy.

- - - Updated - - -

Clearly... It's that or its somehow tiring to have people desperately try to explain how most classes having 70% of their total population being the best performing covenant or having them split across 2 near performing covenants doesnt prove a trend.

An honest question... why is it so hard for a lot of posters here to let go of the fact the average wow player by definition only seems to play what is meta? Why is that such a bitter pill to swallow?

If people where honest with that we might of avoided at least a few pitfalls over the past few expansions but instead they cling to this weird ideal that players want choice?

Let's be clear we are simply being anal about how massive the majority is...

Because we looked at the actual numbers instead of just saying “IM RIGHT FUCK MATH” like you.

[Adamas102]

Why is this trend repeated without question and without variation across all popular specs with exceptions only being found with odd outliners like holy priests then?

The only time we see any kind of notable variation within meta specs is when the covenant offers roughly the same level of power.

It's time to let go... accept that after over 15 years the player base has a set way they want to experience the game.

As has been noted multiple times, because often times those covenant/class/spec combinations are the most thematic. For instance, a good reason why blood death knights are the only DK spec not predominately Necrolord and instead split between that quintessential death covenant and the thematically blood one.

The root of it is that you simply have no idea and are instead apparently functioning under the impression that casual players of each class should be split evenly across the four covenants.

Unlike you, the rest of us aren’t saying that the covenant numbers alone support the statistics of a large casual player base, but rather that your assumption that they definitely point towards a predominately meta/minmaxing player base ignores a number of other factors. So, is it time for you to let go and accept that the covenant numbers aren’t evidence enough to support your conclusion and negate what has historically been known about the average WoW player?

[Candlewick]

As has been noted multiple times, because often times those covenant/class/spec combinations are the most thematic. For instance, a good reason why blood death knights are the only DK spec not predominately Necrolord and instead split between that quintessential death covenant and the thematically blood one.

The root of it is that you simply have no idea and are instead apparently functioning under the impression that casual players of each class should be split evenly across the four covenants.

Unlike you, the rest of us aren’t saying that the covenant numbers alone support the statistics of a large casual player base, but rather that your assumption that they definitely point towards a predominately meta/minmaxing player base ignores a number of other factors. So, is it time for you to let go and accept that the covenant numbers aren’t evidence enough to support your conclusion and negate what has historically been known about the average WoW player?

And when they are not?

You have to struggle and scrap to try and deny the obvious answer... why is it such a bad thing if the majority of wow players play based on power?

[Wonderment2]

They dont dont. You are not entiteld to any story or content no matter if you play for game. You have acess to end game content if you dont do content beocsue of time or skill thats on you and Blizzard have no resposibility to ruin game just to please you. Having unbeaten content is actualy very healthy desing for mmo games yeah it doesn look good on paper for you investors but ruin your game with acessability whjat will make playres quit in long run also doesnt look very healthy and is way more damaging as long term desing decisions what will damage your game are pernament and you cant fix them. Overuse of acessablity is what killed this game.

To be invested in the story you do need to see it all....

How does my suggest on a no gear drop story mode ruin the game :L

Your not entitled to ruin the game for others ethier....

[Adamas102]

And when they are not?

You have to struggle and scrap to try and deny the obvious answer... why is it such a bad thing if the majority of wow players play based on power?

The only struggling is your attempting to use numbers you know nothing about to disprove something that has been known about the game for a long time.

You want to know why your assumption is highly unlikely? Because without good, solid evidence to the contrary there’s no reason to think WoW is any different from any other popular game where the vast majority of people who play are not interested in researching strategies to powergame. We know, based on stats from the first decade of the game, that WoW has had a predominately casual player base who care little for min/maxing and pursuing difficult content, and there has been no indication in recent years that this has changed dramatically.

Again, if you can come up with actually evidence to the contrary then go ahead and present it. Pointing to 80% of Druids picking the nature based covenant is in no way indicative of a large metagaming group of players. That’s about all that can be said since there’s really no data out there that supports your assumptions. Like I said before, you can believe in any fairytale your like, but you shouldn’t be surprised when no one takes your reaching seriously.

[glowpipe]

raids and that part of the game is the only reason i play and will always play wow over other mmo's like ffxiv. Non of them get it right. Wow raids and raiding guilds atmosphere in wow is just unmatched

[Candlewick]

The only struggling is your attempting to use numbers you know nothing about to disprove something that has been known about the game for a long time.

You want to know why your assumption is highly unlikely? Because without good, solid evidence to the contrary there’s no reason to think WoW is any different from any other popular game where the vast majority of people who play are not interested in researching strategies to powergame. We know, based on stats from the first decade of the game, that WoW has had a predominately casual player base who care little for min/maxing and pursuing difficult content, and there has been no indication in recent years that this has changed dramatically.

Again, if you can come up with actually evidence to the contrary then go ahead and present it. Pointing to 80% of Druids picking the nature based covenant is in no way indicative of a large metagaming group of players. That’s about all that can be said since there’s really no data out there that supports your assumptions. Like I said before, you can believe in any fairytale your like, but you shouldn’t be surprised when no one takes your reaching seriously.

It's been 15 years... the playerbase has changed. Those 15 years ago when everyone was a newbie are gone they are not coming back.

Covenant breakdown isnt happen chance nor is it theme related or there wouldnt be such massive off tone choices. Now maybe way back when you where right. Perhaps in wrath or mop but we as a collective have moved on. If you think covenants are bad look at the break down of equipped legos.

The average player min maxes to the level of doing what guides tell them. The " I do what I want super random build crowd" is a minority. Larger then mythic raiders and rated pvpers sure but just another minority all the less.

The "muh choices" crowd must be smothered you understand that no?

[Kallisto]

Im sorry but what FF14 mechanics are a joke and so easy. They are lfr level difficult at every lvl of game play in FF14. Any game that has 5 to 7 second huge graphic indicators is badly designed for slow players.

Tell the world you have not played FFXIV without actually saying the words right here. LFR groups would likely be able to handle cape westwind, Ifrit and Titan. But Garuda, Moggle Mog and beyond? Nope

[Selah]

I don't know if it's just me (or the fact I'm still mildly hungover) but I'm having a difficult time understanding the OP's post. However, from what I have been able to understand, it's basically the argument that players want and crave difficulty and challenge and seeing awesome rewards on other people will motivate others to achieve the same. Similar to the talking point Preach uses when he talks about motivations for hardcore mythic raiding.

I don't disagree on those points entirely. It can motivate players to do better and engage with that more hardcore element of the game. There's a couple problems with this mindset though.

The first issue is that raiding shouldn't be treated like the holy grail of endgame content. Yeah, it's an engaging form of content for the people that choose to do it and there is a level of skill associated with it, and renown. The problem is though, WoW should be encouraging and creating other forms of endgame content that can be engaged with by groups or individuals. Torghast is a great example of something with the potential to be something really cool and engaging that could be a legitimate form of endgame content. Instead we got a half-baked system that has been mandatory up to 9.2.

The other issue is the absolute gulf of time that is required to play high-end raiding. The gear treadmill, the conduits, the leggos, gear farming, gold/item farming, M+ farming, Dom sockets, and so on. It all takes so much time just to step foot into the raiding scene. Then once you get there you have to spend more time actually doing the fights, learning them, and the fights aren't easily accessible - so if you want to just work on a particular boss and the reset just happened, you have to clear the whole raid, again. Look, I have no doubt (since I've done it in the past) I could do the mythic raiding current day if I wanted to... but why would I want to? I'm married, have kids, a career, family, other hobbies I want to pursue, and other games I want to play. Why would I miss out on all of that for some digital art assets for my character to wear for a raid tier? That's not how I want to live my life. Sure, it'd be cool to do top end raiding but the time I'd have to put into it isn't worth it.

I did see an argument about raids being used to tell important story points. I agree that they can be used in that manner but Blizzard would actually have to do that instead of treating raids like "oh, hey, you fight the bad guy and won, congrats!"

I actually have my own idea for raiding that I believe would make it far more engaging and likely to pull more people in to play.

- Remove all of these secondary, tertiary, and obscure ways of gearing. Make it a nice and simple path for gearing that is obvious to everyone.
- Merge LFR and normal, keep the flex-ability: the difference between the two in terms of difficulty is minimal. This would be the new "normal" difficulty.
- Allow players to queue for normal through the dungeon finder
- Keep heroic where it is in terms of difficulty
(alright, here's where I'm going to get a lot of aggro)
- Remove gear drops from mythic entirely
- Add unique cosmetic only drops to mythic, needless to say, the cosmetics here could only be earned through mythic
- Make the gear that drops from heroic the BiS gear for PvE.
- Then tune mythic around the drops from heroic
- Allow players/groups to zone directly into bosses once they've cleared up to (that means if you've only killed The Nine, you'll be able to zone direct into Tarragrue, the Eye, the Nine, and Soulrender since they'll be progressing on him by that point).

What does these purposed changes do exactly? A couple of things. First off, it reduces how much tuning Blizzard does. Instead of four difficulties plus the differences mythic sees as progression happens (meaning the further into the mythic raid you go the more tuning that needs to be done) instead Blizzard is tuning three difficulties in total and there is no additional tuning that needs to happen deeper into the mythic raids.

It removes that massive time sink required to raid at the high-end of things and allows people to engage with the content on their terms (and availability) instead of the game's terms while also preserving that level of prestige that comes with clearing the most difficult content in the game.

It also opens the doors for more players to access high-end content which means more people that can raid and more people engaging with that content. Maybe I don't have time to run SoD and progress on it with how it's set up right now, but I could if I could just port straight to the boss the group is progressing and put in a good 45 minutes to an hour of attempts. And, assuming the fight is good, I'd have fun doing it. Instead of now where it's "great, reset just happened, so I now need to do all of these bosses again and that's going to take X amount of hours that I just don't have and don't want to spend doing that."

Just my thoughts though.

[Candlewick]

I don't know if it's just me (or the fact I'm still mildly hungover) but I'm having a difficult time understanding the OP's post. However, from what I have been able to understand, it's basically the argument that players want and crave difficulty and challenge and seeing awesome rewards on other people will motivate others to achieve the same. Similar to the talking point Preach uses when he talks about motivations for hardcore mythic raiding.

I don't disagree on those points entirely. It can motivate players to do better and engage with that more hardcore element of the game. There's a couple problems with this mindset though.

The first issue is that raiding shouldn't be treated like the holy grail of endgame content. Yeah, it's an engaging form of content for the people that choose to do it and there is a level of skill associated with it, and renown. The problem is though, WoW should be encouraging and creating other forms of endgame content that can be engaged with by groups or individuals. Torghast is a great example of something with the potential to be something really cool and engaging that could be a legitimate form of endgame content. Instead we got a half-baked system that has been mandatory up to 9.2.

The other issue is the absolute gulf of time that is required to play high-end raiding. The gear treadmill, the conduits, the leggos, gear farming, gold/item farming, M+ farming, Dom sockets, and so on. It all takes so much time just to step foot into the raiding scene. Then once you get there you have to spend more time actually doing the fights, learning them, and the fights aren't easily accessible - so if you want to just work on a particular boss and the reset just happened, you have to clear the whole raid, again. Look, I have no doubt (since I've done it in the past) I could do the mythic raiding current day if I wanted to... but why would I want to? I'm married, have kids, a career, family, other hobbies I want to pursue, and other games I want to play. Why would I miss out on all of that for some digital art assets for my character to wear for a raid tier? That's not how I want to live my life. Sure, it'd be cool to do top end raiding but the time I'd have to put into it isn't worth it.

I did see an argument about raids being used to tell important story points. I agree that they can be used in that manner but Blizzard would actually have to do that instead of treating raids like "oh, hey, you fight the bad guy and won, congrats!"

I actually have my own idea for raiding that I believe would make it far more engaging and likely to pull more people in to play.

- Remove all of these secondary, tertiary, and obscure ways of gearing. Make it a nice and simple path for gearing that is obvious to everyone.
- Merge LFR and normal, keep the flex-ability: the difference between the two in terms of difficulty is minimal. This would be the new "normal" difficulty.
- Allow players to queue for normal through the dungeon finder
- Keep heroic where it is in terms of difficulty
(alright, here's where I'm going to get a lot of aggro)
- Remove gear drops from mythic entirely
- Add unique cosmetic only drops to mythic, needless to say, the cosmetics here could only be earned through mythic
- Make the gear that drops from heroic the BiS gear for PvE.
- Then tune mythic around the drops from heroic
- Allow players/groups to zone directly into bosses once they've cleared up to (that means if you've only killed The Nine, you'll be able to zone direct into Tarragrue, the Eye, the Nine, and Soulrender since they'll be progressing on him by that point).

What does these purposed changes do exactly? A couple of things. First off, it reduces how much tuning Blizzard does. Instead of four difficulties plus the differences mythic sees as progression happens (meaning the further into the mythic raid you go the more tuning that needs to be done) instead Blizzard is tuning three difficulties in total and there is no additional tuning that needs to happen deeper into the mythic raids.

It removes that massive time sink required to raid at the high-end of things and allows people to engage with the content on their terms (and availability) instead of the game's terms while also preserving that level of prestige that comes with clearing the most difficult content in the game.

It also opens the doors for more players to access high-end content which means more people that can raid and more people engaging with that content. Maybe I don't have time to run SoD and progress on it with how it's set up right now, but I could if I could just port straight to the boss the group is progressing and put in a good 45 minutes to an hour of attempts. And, assuming the fight is good, I'd have fun doing it. Instead of now where it's "great, reset just happened, so I now need to do all of these bosses again and that's going to take X amount of hours that I just don't have and don't want to spend doing that."

Just my thoughts though.

The issue I see from the view point of a mythic raider for a decade is how would progression work...?

If players are only gearing through heroic does that mean that bosses are no longer checked by gear from earlier bosses? If you give mythic raiders full gear that quickly any between 1-1000 roughly would demolish the lions share of the tier early on then stone wall at the road block boss. If you make the earlier fights harder to compensate do you then get rid of the gradual difficulty climb?

I'm not saying it can't work im just saying it involves a lot of questions of just what should mythic be.

[Selah]

The issue I see from the view point of a mythic raider for a decade is how would progression work...?

If players are only gearing through heroic does that mean that bosses are no longer checked by gear from earlier bosses? If you give mythic raiders full gear that quickly any between 1-1000 roughly would demolish the lions share of the tier early on then stone wall at the road block boss. If you make the earlier fights harder to compensate do you then get rid of the gradual difficulty climb?

Yeah, gear checks from bosses wouldn't be a thing *after* you clear heroic. The checks then would be skill, group coordination/mechanics, designs, ect. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't think a boss or raid encounter created specifically to check your gear is a particularly interesting, creative, or fun way to build a fight. That sort of encounter seems more like a time gating mechanism in the raid, that's not to say they can't do interesting things with that kind of fight but I've never really seen it.

I'd imagine a difficulty climb would still be a thing. I'm sure that there will be a road block boss that (in this system) players wouldn't be able to over gear and push through... which is something I think is fine personally. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that it's okay to have bosses that can't just be bulled over by gear?

I'm not saying it can't work im just saying it involves a lot of questions of just what should mythic be.

Maybe I'm mistaken in saying this, but it's always been my view that mythic is the pinnacle of challenge when it comes to raiding. So, why not truly embrace that and make it exactly that? And why not give unique rewards to those who clear it?

[Candlewick]

Yeah, gear checks from bosses wouldn't be a thing *after* you clear heroic. The checks then would be skill, group coordination/mechanics, designs, ect. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't think a boss or raid encounter created specifically to check your gear is a particularly interesting, creative, or fun way to build a fight. That sort of encounter seems more like a time gating mechanism in the raid, that's not to say they can't do interesting things with that kind of fight but I've never really seen it.

I'd imagine a difficulty climb would still be a thing. I'm sure that there will be a road block boss that (in this system) players wouldn't be able to over gear and push through... which is something I think is fine personally. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that it's okay to have bosses that can't just be bulled over by gear?



Maybe I'm mistaken in saying this, but it's always been my view that mythic is the pinnacle of challenge when it comes to raiding. So, why not truly embrace that and make it exactly that? And why not give unique rewards to those who clear it?

Even in mythic there are degrees of player ability. While I would say world 1-200 comes down more to time spent raiding with slight skill differences the rest of CE varies drastically. I could see it causing issues and making lower mythic guilds extremely unstable.

[Selah]

Even in mythic there are degrees of player ability. While I would say world 1-200 comes down more to time spent raiding with slight skill differences the rest of CE varies drastically. I could see it causing issues and making lower mythic guilds extremely unstable.

Without a doubt, there are varying degrees of skill within the mythic bracket. As there is with the rest of the brackets.

I actually think it would help to strengthen the lower end guilds. You're removing the massive time sink that is required just to step into mythic, you're exponentially increasing the size of the pool of people that will try mythic, and you're lowering the bar for entry to mythic by making the appropriate gear easier (and quicker) to acquire.

[Drusin]

Trial of the Crusader, no trash just encounters <3

[shadowmatrix]

Tell the world you have not played FFXIV without actually saying the words right here. LFR groups would likely be able to handle cape westwind, Ifrit and Titan. But Garuda, Moggle Mog and beyond? Nope

You forgot that many raids are required to progress the story so they have to be kept somewhat easy. Plus there is zero chance of any completing raid and alliance roulettes if they were hard. LFR groups would be just fine in normal and hard mode encounters, extreme would require some work however. So says the blue mage who farmed many raids and trials cause that damn action wouldn't drop.

[zealo]

Tell the world you have not played FFXIV without actually saying the words right here. LFR groups would likely be able to handle cape westwind, Ifrit and Titan. But Garuda, Moggle Mog and beyond? Nope

While FF14 isn’t afraid of putting mechanics players can kill themselves with even below extreme versions of trials, those come a bit later than that.

ARR trials in general would have a hard time being more trivial than they are in large part because of how high the ilvl sync in use in the roulettes are.

Now, I could definitely believe the first two trials of EW could give a LFR tier of player a lot of trouble, but Garuda? No way.