STOP making the game for the top 0.01% of the players! It’s killing this game

[arkanon]

There is a significant difference between the game being hard and people being absolutely dogshit. Normal raids in general are not hard.

Pugs are consistently full of players who are absolutely terrible at the game. I'm not talking "I'm not good enough for heroic" terrible, I'm talking "I literally keyboard turn and click abilities" terrible.

I've played this game since 1.7 and have had the fortune to play with some really good players and the misfortune to play with some absolutely fucking awful ones.

The type of player who dies on EVERY encounter because they stand in fire on EVERY single attempt despite being told exactly what they are doing wrong. The type of player who cannot dodge exploding stuff on the floor and die every single time, every single attempt.

These are the sorts of players that go into PUGS and then complain that the game is hard. It's not hard, they are just god-fucking-awful because they are completely incapable of learning from their mistakes even when they are being handheld.

Some players are just bad, pure and simple. There are plenty of 'casual' players that are genuinely really good players, and there are plenty of 'hardcore' players that are genuinely total dogshit. The difficulty of content has less of an impact than people think.

When we disbanded after stopping mythic raiding, jumped on our friends and family server and started pugging normal / heroic, we found an interesting issue - modern gearing paths allowed people to meet or sometimes even exceed heroic gear levels without EVER having stepped into a raid. As anyone who raids understands, raiding and M+ / PvP are completely different skill sets and an entirely different experience. As such when you throw a virgin raider into the mix, the results can be pretty godamn terrible. This was our most common outcome - 50/50. Invite 4 pugs with appropriate gear, 2 will perform as expected, 2 will be below the tanks and healers in dps on boss fights and die 15% in every attempt.

Im aware there are tools like Rio at the time to help with this, but we thought "its only normal" or "its only heroic" and boy were we wrong.

- - - Updated - - -

Nailed it.

I get that this forum is full of people who do Mythic Jailer with their eyes closed, disregarding the fact that only 17 guilds have done in almost a month...

That is called a strawman - no one here has claimed to have killed mythic jailer, so why even bring that up? Although you have made more than one claim about how good you are....

[stutt-]

the only 0.01% I'm seeing here is the 0.01% the game isn't designed for.

If you have severe mental and motor disabilities to the point where you consider content to be this hard, it's not the fault of the game

If the top most organized and skilled guilds were wiping on heroic, is that hard to grasp that the average pug would have trouble doing some normal bosses?

[OrangeJuice]

On a scale of 1-10 you have to perform at a 7 to be in the top 0.01%. Blizz can't possibly make the game any stupider for you to figure out how to push your 3 buttons without tunnel visioning the action bar.

[Lollis]

When we disbanded after stopping mythic raiding, jumped on our friends and family server and started pugging normal / heroic, we found an interesting issue - modern gearing paths allowed people to meet or sometimes even exceed heroic gear levels without EVER having stepped into a raid. As anyone who raids understands, raiding and M+ / PvP are completely different skill sets and an entirely different experience. As such when you throw a virgin raider into the mix, the results can be pretty godamn terrible. This was our most common outcome - 50/50. Invite 4 pugs with appropriate gear, 2 will perform as expected, 2 will be below the tanks and healers in dps on boss fights and die 15% in every attempt.

I've raided since Vanilla so I've never really had that barrier but I can certainly see how some players might be uncomfortable with the differences. There isn't really a way (other than LFR which is a significantly different experience to normal raiding) where an inexperience player can really learn the ways of raiding without just jumping in and the group they are with can be the difference between a humbling learning experience and a sudden complete hatred of raiding.

[MoanaLisa]

You dont REALLY think THAT is the reason people left, do you?

It's easier to say that former players, players who used to raid successfully, might stumble across the world first race, see the difficulty for the very best teams in the game, and conclude that it's not for them. I'm not making any claims or providing any evidence other than common sense. I doubt if that's even a blip on the population graphs but impressions get around through word-of-mouth.

I wouldn't mind it if they made a version for the world first race (something they seem to do) and left it alone alongside the more regular mythic version. Let it reward cosmetics and achievements or some such.

[Celement]

Based on that logic, mythic is just LFR with a few new abilities.....Lets not pretend the only difference between clearing mythic and clearing LFR is "a few new abilities"

How is it different? I don't get the weird fixation of lamenting that high end players get 2 modes made just for them with reused content... they get maybe 1% of the content and people whine rather then offer feedback on the rest of the game.

[MoanaLisa]

I've raided since Vanilla so I've never really had that barrier but I can certainly see how some players might be uncomfortable with the differences. There isn't really a way (other than LFR which is a significantly different experience to normal raiding) where an inexperience player can really learn the ways of raiding without just jumping in and the group they are with can be the difference between a humbling learning experience and a sudden complete hatred of raiding.

It's been a while since I've come across raiding guilds that keep a "B" team around (and occasionally more) to train up raiders. There was a day when some raiding guilds were more inclusive. From what I see now when I see recruiting ads nearly all are demanding someone that's ready to go. I think there is a bootstrap effect and that the progression links between normal/heroic/mythic are somewhat broken now on a community basis. This can't be good for raiding over the long run which needs new infusions of players to avoid having difficult times due to natural attrition.

[Relapses]

It's been a while since I've come across raiding guilds that keep a "B" team around (and occasionally more) to train up raiders. There was a day when some raiding guilds were more inclusive. From what I see now when I see recruiting ads nearly all are demanding someone that's ready to go. I think there is a bootstrap effect and that the progression links between normal/heroic/mythic are somewhat broken now on a community basis. This can't be good for raiding over the long run which needs new infusions of players to avoid having difficult times due to natural attrition.

To be fair, I personally think this is a knock-on effect of Blizzard's strange insistence on having finding a guild be one of the most unintuitive, cumbersome and often times flat-out anti-social journeys a player can embark upon. They do not give players any tools to find guilds (there's the guild finder technically but it's a joke). You either know somebody who knows somebody or you broadcast on third party websites in the hope a recruitment officer sees you. I think a lot of this games' issues with raiding in general could be solved if Blizzard just sat down and created a UI element for guild recruitment which helped match like-minded players with one another.

[VMSmith]

To be fair, I personally think this is a knock-on effect of Blizzard's strange insistence on having finding a guild be one of the most unintuitive, cumbersome and oten times flat-out anti-social journeys a player can embark upon.

Every guild I've ever joined in WoW, except one, has either been a result of someone saying in /2 "We're recruiting, we're blah blah blah, join us", and joining just to be in a guild ... or it's been due to a guild merger.

Exactly one time, during TBC, I grouped up with some people in the wild and after a few hours of questing together decided to join their guild.

As for the OP: Maybe it's time to recognize that WoW is not being developed in a manner that suits your desires from a game and go look around at the other games on offer. There's such a huge variety of styles of MMO out there, something is bound to fit your playstyle much better than WoW, if you're having problems. I recommend you stop trying to fit your square peg in a star-shaped hole.

[Twdft]

Raid heroic if mythic is too hard for you. The fuck you talking about?

[Relapses]

Every guild I've ever joined in WoW, except one, has either been a result of someone saying in /2 "We're recruiting, we're blah blah blah, join us", and joining just to be in a guild ... or it's been due to a guild merger.

Exactly one time, during TBC, I grouped up with some people in the wild and after a few hours of questing together decided to join their guild.

If you're hyper casual and want a guild for the sake of having a guild, /2 guilds are perfect for that. But some players may want a more catered experience and you'll be hard pressed to find, for example, a raiding guild worth its salt that recruits from /2. (As a CE raider through the end of WoD, we'd constantly meme the /2 recruiting guilds.) For the mid-to-high-end there are still vanishingly few tools to help find like-minded players and it's a shame because so much of this game's experience can be made or broken by the people you're playing with.

[VMSmith]

If you're hyper casual and want a guild for the sake of having a guild, /2 guilds are perfect for that. But some players may want a more catered experience and you'll be hard pressed to find, for example, a raiding guild worth its salt that recruits from /2. (As a CE raider through the end of WoD, we'd constantly meme the /2 recruiting guilds.) For the mid-to-high-end there are still vanishingly few tools to help find like-minded players and it's a shame because so much of this game's experience can be made or broken by the people you're playing with.

For the record, I was agreeing with you Just highlighting that at all levels the process of finding a guild in WoW is so scattershot that it's completely random whether you find one that is worthwhile or not. /2 guilds tend to fold within a month or two because the people running them just really aren't cut out to run a guild. Rarely, someone with the ability finds other someone's with the ability and a functioning guild results.

[arkanon]

How is it different? I don't get the weird fixation of lamenting that high end players get 2 modes made just for them with reused content... they get maybe 1% of the content and people whine rather then offer feedback on the rest of the game.

So you believe the only difference between a bunch of friends playing a pick up game of football at the park with randoms and the superbowl is a few extra refs?

[Hctaz]

Making something so hard only a small portion of players (the people who are ACTUALLY FUCKING GOOD at the game) is not "catering" to them. It's throwing them a bone so they don't get bored and quit.

I agree about gear being a reward, though, but I disagree whole-heartedly about making the bar for the game low enough that normal people can do the hardest stuff. I wouldn't touch an MMO if it didn't have epeen stuff attached to it. I'm here to compete and lord over others.

Not really sure why there are so many comments saying something like this.

OP clearly said that Normal raids are difficult to pug, not Mythic raids are too difficult to pug.

I can agree it seems the difficulty of the game is increasing over time to the point it's no longer fun for less organized groups. I had a lot of fun pugging Normal mode raids in Wrath, and there are tons of pugs doing things in Vanilla and TBC.

I still enjoy doing the hardest content in a guild group setting. I really don't think that they need to make it so difficult to clear though. Most of the time, these raids were cleared by top guilds within the first week of them being available, but that has become increasingly rare to where it's taking multiple weeks. The players aren't getting worse, the raids are getting harder. It's not really fun or healthy to grind a raid for 14+ hours a day for any amount of time, but these dudes are doing it for more than an entire week now.

I can't help but notice that it's not exactly good design, and I'm somebody who enjoys and has cleared difficult content with good guilds in the past.

[The King in Yellow]

So first the game was catered to the top 5 percent, now its only for the 0.01%

This is becoming confusing.

Also normal and heroic are perfectly PUGable, at least in my experience but hey.

I’m glad that popular youtubers including Asmongold are starting to point this out. You’ve made the game for 200 people, congratulations.

This made me chuckle though.

[Hctaz]

It's easier to say that former players, players who used to raid successfully, might stumble across the world first race, see the difficulty for the very best teams in the game, and conclude that it's not for them. I'm not making any claims or providing any evidence other than common sense. I doubt if that's even a blip on the population graphs but impressions get around through word-of-mouth.

I wouldn't mind it if they made a version for the world first race (something they seem to do) and left it alone alongside the more regular mythic version. Let it reward cosmetics and achievements or some such.

As somebody who has consistently raided the highest level of content from Wrath, I can wholeheartedly say that they jumped the difficulty up to insane levels in WoD and beyond.

I have no idea why the world first race lasting more than the first reset is considered bad, but it seems like that's the sort of thing that Blizzard is trying to do. It's like a challenge for them to make these top guilds spend more than one reset wiping on these Mythic bosses, but why? Not only does it hurt the rest of the playerbase, but it's also hurting these people who are going to insane lengths to clear the content. They're playing like 15+ hours a day. Let them finish the damn raid within the first week so they can breathe LOL

[MoanaLisa]

As somebody who has consistently raided the highest level of content from Wrath, I can wholeheartedly say that they jumped the difficulty up to insane levels in WoD and beyond.

I have no idea why the world first race lasting more than the first reset is considered bad, but it seems like that's the sort of thing that Blizzard is trying to do. It's like a challenge for them to make these top guilds spend more than one reset wiping on these Mythic bosses, but why? Not only does it hurt the rest of the playerbase, but it's also hurting these people who are going to insane lengths to clear the content. They're playing like 15+ hours a day. Let them finish the damn raid within the first week so they can breathe LOL

Apparently, Blizzard and many in its community of players has difficulty resisting escalation in its many and varied forms.

[arkanon]

As somebody who has consistently raided the highest level of content from Wrath, I can wholeheartedly say that they jumped the difficulty up to insane levels in WoD and beyond.

I have no idea why the world first race lasting more than the first reset is considered bad, but it seems like that's the sort of thing that Blizzard is trying to do. It's like a challenge for them to make these top guilds spend more than one reset wiping on these Mythic bosses, but why? Not only does it hurt the rest of the playerbase, but it's also hurting these people who are going to insane lengths to clear the content. They're playing like 15+ hours a day. Let them finish the damn raid within the first week so they can breathe LOL

Sadly a good portion of the community complained during even cata that the game was "too easy" even though they didnt play beyond low/lowest difficulties. I dont know if that was a factor or not, but it was very real. I am surprised they have increased the OVERALL difficulty of what is essentially FLEX so much - flex was EXTREMELY simple in SoO, with only the last couple of bosses offering any real challenge for people experienced in raiding. Now there does seem to be a lot more going on, tighter timers, more punishing abilities, etc.

What I absolutely do NOT agree with is that they cater to or design the game for the top 10%, top 5%, or top 0.01% - i just dont see ANY evidence of that at all.

[Celement]

So you believe the only difference between a bunch of friends playing a pick up game of football at the park with randoms and the superbowl is a few extra refs?

I am struggling to understand the labored likely poor point you are trying to make...

Fundamentally the difference is the mentality and approach they take to it. It's the same stadium?

Can you just plainly spell out your argument you are shit at allegory.

[Ezyah]

The people who decline you in a normal raid are the casual without guild like you, not blizzard