Should raiding be easier across all difficulties?

[tomten]

Mythic is not just the endboss genius.
You don't have to clear to have fun in there. But whatever.
If you think the game gets better by taking content out sure. Go on. I doubt it.
There are a good deal more people somewhere in mythic than people tend to believe,

But the only thing people care about is clearing and fucking over top end players for whatever reason

Lowest participation in history off wow translates to people having fun, genius?
Even world first guilds didn't like this tier and "top end" players needed multiple nerfs to clear it, so they clearly were not good enough anyhow.
I'm not even sure a 25% blanket nerf would be enough to the current nerfs implemented but whatever, you know best of course.

[Soikona]

I say yes, but only from a stand point that I believe mythic raids have got so mechanic heavy that if one person fucks, it’s game over. I believe recovery should be possible, and that when farming you can have banter. Right now, it doesn’t feel like that.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Raiding scene sure started to fall off as the arms race between the raid team and like 3-4 guilds at the top became more and more a priority. I don't think mythic should be EASY. But I don't think it should be designed around brow beating the top 75-100 players in the world into the dirt and making it so difficulty for people outside of groups that it requires like 75% nerfs, mechanics being stripped away, and things of that level for it to reach a suitable participation level. I mean that is pretty much happened in the last tier right? Realistically, you really mythic raiding plus for the people that cleared it in the first month or two. Then it was just a cleaver chopping the raid down to probably where it should have been almost on a weekly/bi-weekly biases for the next 2-3 months. The problem was by the time it got to where a normal mythic raid would be at the damage was done and most people had ditched.

[Razorice]

No.

If you want an easier challenge, drop to a lower difficulty rating.
Some people enjoy tackling challenges you know?

[VinceVega]

Lowest participation in history off wow translates to people having fun, genius?
Even world first guilds didn't like this tier and "top end" players needed multiple nerfs to clear it, so they clearly were not good enough anyhow.
I'm not even sure a 25% blanket nerf would be enough to the current nerfs implemented but whatever, you know best of course.

I even said the last raid was more diffcult than the ones before. But people want to make it even easier then it was before that.

Also the low raid participation has many reason. Like for example this being the least played expansion ever. People hating the story. And the difficultie of sepulcher. Whcih was to hard i agree here.
But the other raids have not been to difficult. There is nor reason to remove content people never wuld touch just to make the same people feel better.
I very seldom play PvP. But i don't want it removed.
I don't go over mythic+20 and mostly i just do my 15s. But i don't want it removed just because I am not good enough to play high end pvp.
So... bye

[Ilookfly]

Nah, difficulty is fine around where it is right now.

[Gorsameth]

I even said the last raid was more diffcult than the ones before. But people want to make it even easier then it was before that.

Also the low raid participation has many reason. Like for example this being the least played expansion ever. People hating the story. And the difficultie of sepulcher. Whcih was to hard i agree here.
But the other raids have not been to difficult. There is nor reason to remove content people never wuld touch just to make the same people feel better.
I very seldom play PvP. But i don't want it removed.
I don't go over mythic+20 and mostly i just do my 15s. But i don't want it removed just because I am not good enough to play high end pvp.
So... bye

Raids have been becoming more and more mechanically complex and unforgiving for a while now, its not just Sepulcher.
No one is saying Mythic should be 'easy' but there is a notable level of difference, especially in Normal and Heroic, between say Legion and SL.

[Relapses]

The problem is the best m+ gear still comes from mythic raiding, I know a lot of m+ players who feel like have to raid just to get the gear they need to push m+ which is pretty demotivating after a while. In DF it looks like with the Item levels being higher from the last few bosses it could be more of the same again which I think is a huge mistake, m+ is the most popular endgame activity but feels like blizz wants to treat it like a side activity to raiding

I'm a bit skeptical of what's been datamined so far. There hasn't been any outward communication from Blizzard about how they are going to handle gear in DF. I hope, like you, that this isn't the case as it would push the game further in the direction of raid-or-die... something we already know from WoD will not work.

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Mythic+ is not interesting to most casuals and since heroics are not a progression choice, the expansion is over very early, and without a reason to play for almost 2 years it is easier to not come back at all.

...and Mythic raiding is?

I don't have an issue with making Normal/Heroic easier but personally think the Normal difficulty is a bit redundant.

[Hctaz]

I dunno if it needs to be "easier" but I do think they need to reconsider Mythic balancing.

They often times release certain mechanics that are so tightly overtuned that there's a very specific strategy employed that was never used before.
I remember when people race changed to Goblin against Mythic KJ in Tomb of Sargeras because his endless knockbacks were much easier to manage when you could just racial out of them as long as the CD was up.

Imagine having entire alliance guilds faction change to horde and entire horde guilds race change to goblin just so they could more easily defeat the mechanic. It was eventually nerfed, but they run the risk of tuning things too highly and causing problems.



Also: Lowering mythic difficulty won't do anything to stop the burnout that is happening in many top guilds. Ever since Legion, the amount of chores a top-level raider needs to complete in order to stay relevant has been higher than ever. It's why you see another top guild fall apart every so often. Really, they need to address that aspect of raiding. I am all for having optional sideways progression, but I really think they need to separate the various game modes a bit more.

There was not really any harm in keeping certain game modes separate from each other. I, myself, engaged in both PvE and PvP in Classic WoW when that was re-released despite the INSANE tax I was facing. Respeccing 50 gold was quite a lot back then unless you had a mage capable of selling boosts, especially when you'd have to: Respec from PvE to PvP at the end of the raid week. Respec back to PvE just before raid started. Respec back to PvP after raid. Respec back to PvE before the start of your next raid. Respect back to PvP... repeat until you reach the end of the raid week. For me, that was something like 3 nights where I'd drop a fat 100 gold. Really adds up after a while, and that's not to mention the 2k gold I spent lifetime in Free Action Potions.

I think it's fine so long as you are making them separate. Somebody who merely wanted to play PvP or merely wanted to do PvE wouldn't have had to fork over nearly as much as I did in gold costs and overall consumables (I didn't even mention all the costs of raid consumes in the above section), but those who enjoy both pieces of content can put forth the work to do it. I think that's a better solution than the one we have now where typically your progression in any one aspect of the game is essentially limitless.

They need to introduce caps to how far you can progress your character in each aspect weekly. Once they do that, we can look at the overall difficulty and say whether or not it needs a nerf.

[roldy27]

I think normal was fine in general with quite a few outliers in sepulcher, but in general it was quite fun and relaxing to do with some lesser skilled friends. On the other hand I don't like how much harder heroic got in shadowlands I think it feels way too much like mythic nowadays. I think it should be reasonably puggable not long from the start of the tier with above averagely skilled raiders otherwise it's just not worth the time considering m+ drops almost the same itemlevel for much less effort. If you're in a cutting edge guild and have to do actual progression on mid tier heroic bosses something went wrong with tuning.

For mythic it depends a lot on how long the tier is going to be. If a guild is reasonably skilled and raids 2-3 nights a week they should be able to clear the raid and have at least a month to farm the raid after progression. In that regard both castle nathria and sanctum felt like they were tuned right although it should be noted that both tiers were longer than most non end of expansion raids have been in the past.

I also think they should design the raid in a way that guilds are not forced to extend as much as they currently are and rekills should feel fun and not as much like a chore (looking at assignements for bosses like kel'thuzad, sire, anduin, jailer), which also means that it should be easier to outgear mechanics at a certain point and bosses should be designed in a way that having more dps is a benefit not a curse. I really can't say how much I have grown to dislike the constant damage stops you are "encouraged" to do during farm.

On this note I'd also like to add that each of the tiers in shadowlands had too many bosses. I feel like the more bosses are added to a raid the more forgettable a lot of the bosses get. I'd prefer tiers with a maximum of 8 really good bosses with an ok amount of trasher rather than a raid like sepulcher with 11 bosses with quite a few duds and way too much trash in there. I think they could have just removed the whole "left side" (dausegne, pantheon, lihuvim) and the tier wouldn't have lost much or they could have split the tier in half and have had one raid release with Anduin as a final boss in season 3 and have another raid with LoD, Rygelon and Jailer in season 4 similar to what we had in the first tier of legion with Emerlad Nightmare and Trial of Valor.

[tomten]

I even said the last raid was more diffcult than the ones before. But people want to make it even easier then it was before that.

Also the low raid participation has many reason. Like for example this being the least played expansion ever. People hating the story. And the difficultie of sepulcher. Whcih was to hard i agree here.
But the other raids have not been to difficult. There is nor reason to remove content people never wuld touch just to make the same people feel better.
I very seldom play PvP. But i don't want it removed.
I don't go over mythic+20 and mostly i just do my 15s. But i don't want it removed just because I am not good enough to play high end pvp.
So... bye

There has been several outliner's from his whole expansion and every tier, sepulcher just over the entirety of it.
I have not said anything about removing content?
I have said, across the board, in its current form, raids should be nerfed by 75/50/25%. (normal, heroic, mythic)
I'm also like 99% sure a 25% nerf for mythic this tier doesn't even come CLOSE to the total nerfs applied to that tier, with some noticeable 90% nerfs receiving still further nerfs or mechanics outright removed.

I like hard content, i have been raiding mythic before it was mythic and I also do keys above 20s.
But the fact is? I'm an exceptional player and not the norm, its increasingly difficult to raid in friends and family guild and kill shit, even after nerfs. I dont want too and I certainly can't raid 3-4 days a week on a schedule. And previously/historically? You've pretty much always been able to overgear content, specially an end of expansion tier like this but its just mechanically to complex for most of the player base and its hurting raiding as a whole.

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On this note I'd also like to add that each of the tiers in shadowlands had too many bosses. I feel like the more bosses are added to a raid the more forgettable a lot of the bosses get. I'd prefer tiers with a maximum of 8 really good bosses with an ok amount of trasher rather than a raid like sepulcher with 11 bosses with quite a few duds and way too much trash in there. I think they could have just removed the whole "left side" (dausegne, pantheon, lihuvim) and the tier wouldn't have lost much or they could have split the tier in half and have had one raid release with Anduin as a final boss in season 3 and have another raid with LoD, Rygelon and Jailer in season 4 similar to what we had in the first tier of legion with Emerlad Nightmare and Trial of Valor.

It should have been 2 tiers but they merged it, its very obvious. Which just mad it annoyingly long and hard.
There's also too much trash, I don't like spending 15 min on trash to kill a 4 min boss.

[jeezusisacasual]

There has been several outliner's from his whole expansion and every tier, sepulcher just over the entirety of it.
I have not said anything about removing content?
I have said, across the board, in its current form, raids should be nerfed by 75/50/25%. (normal, heroic, mythic)
I'm also like 99% sure a 25% nerf for mythic this tier doesn't even come CLOSE to the total nerfs applied to that tier, with some noticeable 90% nerfs receiving still further nerfs or mechanics outright removed.

I like hard content, i have been raiding mythic before it was mythic and I also do keys above 20s.
But the fact is? I'm an exceptional player and not the norm, its increasingly difficult to raid in friends and family guild and kill shit, even after nerfs. I dont want too and I certainly can't raid 3-4 days a week on a schedule. And previously/historically? You've pretty much always been able to overgear content, specially an end of expansion tier like this but its just mechanically to complex for most of the player base and its hurting raiding as a whole.

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It should have been 2 tiers but they merged it, its very obvious. Which just mad it annoyingly long and hard.
There's also too much trash, I don't like spending 15 min on trash to kill a 4 min boss.

The farming aspect is very spot on. Repeat kills are almost as hard as the first kills with how tight they are tuned ( reminds me of a Souls game honestly ). I recall in the heyday of raiding ( outside of a few fights ) you could realistically roll the previous fights with very little thought going into it after that first or 2nd kill. The length of the raids themselves are a bit much also when you want really long fights ontop of it ( compare the fight length with classic bosses to now and aim for them then todays ) and you increase the dance difficulty. If you only have to be solid for 4 mins vs 7 mins its obviously harder which is a bit overblown imo. But mythic archie killed my desire to continue on the raiding wheel.

[Goatfish]

You're assuming that the raid has a warlock. My raid is fortunate enough to have one (and it does make wipe recovery quick), but we regularly run with no priest buff, no warrior buff, no mage buff, no monk debuff, and no demon hunter debuff because we only have ten to twelve people depending on who can make it on a given night (our warrior quit in 9.0 because of anima; our one priest is on break; our other priest swapped to shaman healing; our monk canceled his sub; our demon hunter had a baby and can't make raids anymore; our mage swapped to hunter).

What the fuck kind of group are you running with? You can't really blame blizzard for your own lack of recruitment, and no, raids shouldn't be just as easy with your shitty comp as it is with a properly managed comp. Even with the worst comp and no raid buffs/debuffs if your players have half a brain they should be able to steamroll normals.

To put it bluntly, this is like saying the bottom 30% of kids really struggle on tests in school so we just need to lower the passing grade or make the test easier.

Stuff look longer because the players, aka we, were considerable worse or because it was artificially limited.

I have little doubt that if you could find 20 people from current top 10 guilds that have never done Firefighter before it would still die in a few hours. And that's mostly because they will still need to figure things out, if they had a guide it would be dead even faster.

You were saying this bullshit in another thread. Why do people like you want to pretend that no one knew how to play the game back in Wrath? Like what has you so fucking butt hurt that you feel the need to roam these forums and comment about how bad people used to be. This idea that people who played games a decade ago were all massive shitters is just fucking absurd. You're probably just the type of person who would go to an art museum and bitch and moan about how modern day digital art is SO MUCH BETTER than Picasso and Rembrandt aren't you?

[NineSpine]

Mythic is not just the endboss genius.
You don't have to clear to have fun in there. But whatever.
If you think the game gets better by taking content out sure. Go on. I doubt it.
There are a good deal more people somewhere in mythic than people tend to believe,

But the only thing people care about is clearing and fucking over top end players for whatever reason

It's not like we don't have access to the armory. Less than 5% of players do a single mythic boss, and it is reasonable to say that a large number of those are paying for carries. It's a mega-fringe activity comparable to pet battling. The fact that the whole raid system is organized around this is absolute madness and corrosive game design. It isn't working, and it needs to be fixed. It needs a complete revamp that fixes all of these problems:

1. Way too many difficulties.
2. LFR is not fun.
3. Flex just makes running small groups harder and should go away. There is no reason to have larger groups than 10 man.
4. A completely toxic obsession with difficulty.
5. Too much gear inflation.
6. Encounters built for addons.
7. Encounters overflowing with obtuse mechanics.
8. Too many mechanics that impact too few members of the group.

[tomten]

You were saying this bullshit in another thread. Why do people like you want to pretend that no one knew how to play the game back in Wrath? Like what has you so fucking butt hurt that you feel the need to roam these forums and comment about how bad people used to be. This idea that people who played games a decade ago were all massive shitters is just fucking absurd. You're probably just the type of person who would go to an art museum and bitch and moan about how modern day digital art is SO MUCH BETTER than Picasso and Rembrandt aren't you?

I don't think he's calling people shit just the game far easier back then. And playerbase have improved over the years but we haven't improved at the same pace content have been made more difficult.
Obviously everyone shouldn't be able to clear every content but not even being able to carry your "bad friends" is what is killing raiding in my eyes.

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1. Way too many difficulties.
2. LFR is not fun.
3. Flex just makes running small groups harder and should go away. There is no reason to have larger groups than 10 man.
4. A completely toxic obsession with difficulty.
5. Too much gear inflation.
6. Encounters built for addons.
7. Encounters overflowing with obtuse mechanics.
8. Too many mechanics that impact too few members of the group.

You have 14 classes with evoker. Mythic being 20 man format really does make sense.
Overall I agree. 4 difficulties is one too much. Not sure what should be removed though, probably heroic. lfr, normal and mythic. Boom.
The problem with LFR is that it has no real purpose. The gear is useless, the format is boring. It should be the "proving grounds" of raiding.
Gear inflation would be better if they cut one difficulty.

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I don't have an issue with making Normal/Heroic easier but personally think the Normal difficulty is a bit redundant.

Not often I agree with you lol but on this one yeh. One of them really should be cut. I think maybe heroic personally but in the end they will tune it to fit whatever they cut.

[Goatfish]

It's not like we don't have access to the armory. Less than 5% of players do a single mythic boss, and it is reasonable to say that a large number of those are paying for carries. It's a mega-fringe activity comparable to pet battling. The fact that the whole raid system is organized around this is absolute madness and corrosive game design. It isn't working, and it needs to be fixed. It needs a complete revamp that fixes all of these problems:

1. Way too many difficulties.
2. LFR is not fun.
3. Flex just makes running small groups harder and should go away. There is no reason to have larger groups than 10 man.
4. A completely toxic obsession with difficulty.
5. Too much gear inflation.
6. Encounters built for addons.
7. Encounters overflowing with obtuse mechanics.
8. Too many mechanics that impact too few members of the group.

Oh boy, you're still hanging around here just spewing shit and pretending it's true are you? Let's just go over this absurdity nice and easy.

1: How many is too many difficulties and why?
2: Subjective and therefore useless.
3: Flex actually makes running small groups easier and eliminates the need for a 10-man guild to have a bench. There are absolutely reasons to have groups larger than 10 people, quite a multitude of them.
4: Just using the buzz word "toxic" doesn't mean you have any point or that it's true. I suggest you look into "The zone of proximal development", because you're effectively arguing that pro leagues in sports just shouldn't exist.
5: Just another opinion statement without anything backing it up. Should gear just never get stronger?
6: What encounter is built for addons? Just what mechanic is so absurdly complex that you can't look at your screen and figure it out yourself without issue?
7: "overflowing" with even more radical language. How many mechanics is perfect for everyone? What makes a mechanic "obtuse"? Do you even know what "obtuse" means?
8: How many mechanics should impact how many members? What is this magic number? Oh wait, you're just moaning and whining to make yourself feel better without any real substance to any of your arguments AND without understanding anything about encounter and game design.

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I don't think he's calling people shit

Stuff look longer because the players, aka we, were considerable worse

I mean... sure.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

You were saying this bullshit in another thread. Why do people like you want to pretend that no one knew how to play the game back in Wrath? Like what has you so fucking butt hurt that you feel the need to roam these forums and comment about how bad people used to be. This idea that people who played games a decade ago were all massive shitters is just fucking absurd. You're probably just the type of person who would go to an art museum and bitch and moan about how modern day digital art is SO MUCH BETTER than Picasso and Rembrandt aren't you?

I think people knew how to game but the world was a different place in 2008 and meta knowledge and stuff just wasn't the same. There was no streaming or youtube etc solving all mysteries instantaneously. Like we watched kill videos and looked stuff up but it feels like a totally different level now. Probably more stratification between players now too.

People weren't "bad" though any more than like an athlete was bad in the 80s. Times just change!

[tomten]

I mean... sure.

People WERE considerable worse though? He's also including himself in that, i think you're just getting upset for no real reason here.
I also think that holds true for the generation itself (lets not forget wow is soon 20 years old).

[NineSpine]

You have 14 classes with evoker. Mythic being 20 man format really does make sense.
Overall I agree. 4 difficulties is one too much. Not sure what should be removed though, probably heroic. lfr, normal and mythic. Boom.
The problem with LFR is that it has no real purpose. The gear is useless, the format is boring. It should be the "proving grounds" of raiding.
Gear inflation would be better if they cut one difficulty.

The number of classes is completely irrelevant.

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2: Subjective and therefore useless.

I'm not dignifying anything else you said with a response if you think fun is not a valid part of a discussion on game design decisions.

[Goatfish]

People WERE considerable worse though? He's also including himself in that, i think you're just getting upset for no real reason here.
I also think that holds true for the generation itself (lets not forget wow is soon 20 years old).

Except they weren't significantly worse at all. This is just hating on the past so you can feel a sense of supremacy of the present. I see this fallacy constantly and it's just bullshit. Athletes from the first Olympics wouldn't compete against the current day (for the most part), but they are still easily in the top 5% of humanity. The way this guy likes to consistently phrase this is that the people pushing world firsts in ICC may as well be average players by todays standards. It's just not true.

I would actually argue that modern players are potentially worse because of things like kill video's and guides. We used to have to figure these things out on our own. I rate adaptability as one of the highest skills in a players arsenal and it's only more recently that I've noticed a more significant version of the player base who are reliant on guides telling them what to do rather than figuring it out themselves. I can't even count how many groups I've seen brick a key for instance because they want to try the MDI strat or play a meta class but don't have the skills to actually make it work. Instead of trying to do something that actually fits their skillset and works for them, they come to the forums complaining that the game sucks because they can't do what the guide says and are too lazy to figure it out themselves.

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I'm not dignifying anything else you said with a response if you think fun is not a valid part of a discussion on game design decisions.

What is fun? What makes a fun game? My grandma seems to absolutely love playing Farmville but I think it's incredibly not fun and trashy. Fun is a subjective term, and it's not my fault if you can't formulate a response to any legitimate criticism.

To be transparent, I also don't think LFR is fun, but I weigh my opinion on that the same as yours. Zero. I enjoy being pushed to the limits of my skill so it makes no sense to weigh my opinion on how fun the games easiest mode is with any merit.