Raid Finder's effect on normal raiding mechanics.

[theyanger]

Mechanics nowadays are way more elaborated and complicated tham ever realy ppl, whats the deal with all this complaints about how the game was harder on the past, it wasnt, raiding wit 39 other ppl was what made it dificult mechanics were dumb simple, BC mechanics werent as elaborated as the ones we see today either (save for Kael).

How exactly is heroic Vizier not outside the box ? Amber shaper construct stuf ? Freaking tsulong having a phase were you deal damage healling and one were you actualy hit him (essentialy getting the idea they used on Valithria and making it even more elaborated) ? Even Stone Guards tank swap mechanics are pretty darn outside the box.

And have you even seen the Throne of Thunder bosses ? You want more complexity tham Durumu realy ? Didi you read the journal on Lei Shen heroic, I can feel the pain from jsut reading that.

And please dont use Kael as example for anythign that fight is just way way way too overelaborated, blizz know that and they never even atempted somethign close to that craziness, even heroic LK wich I consider to be the hardest boss ever wasnt as overly elaborated as Kael, hes realy overkilling it, explainign that figth to anyone takes liek 2 hours.

To the guy above me 10 mans never had dumbed down mechanics in relation to 25s even on Wrath, what amde 10 mans easier was the tuning, if on a 25 man you needed like 10k dps per dpser on a 10 youd need 8, healing was also easier tanks were less likely to die and such. And also ppl would gear on 25s and do 10 mans wich completly trivialised the thing. Mechanics were always the exact same (and because of this a bunch of 25 guilds used to train mechanics for 25s on multiples 10 on thse bosses with limited atempts) . And plz dont compare 10 mans of wrath with LFR theres a world of diference...

Um, yes, 10 mans absolutely had dumbed down mechanics because they COULD make them vastly easier. 10 mans are the reason we no longer have fights that require more than 2 MAYBE 3 tanks on 25 man, the reasons we can't require abilities that go too far outside of the box because 'oh gosh 10 man might not have that ability', things like that. LFR is the same mechanics just tuned to the level you can ignore them, that's easy to do. You can do that to literally ANY mechanic in the game. You can't however have a mechanic like four horseman without flat out changing it (which is also why it had to change from 40 to 25)

[Chief Brouhaha]

I don't agree with you at all. Sorry, but you use defile as an example. If defile spreads it kills the whole raid. Wind lord, if someone runs into a bomb, it kills most of the raid. On LFR, it doesnt do anything really. Defile would be the same. And I don't know about you, but Feng, Stone Guards, Spirit binder, Garalon, Windlord, Tsulong, all have pretty interesting mechanics. Every single fight in a raid isnt going to be wildly different, they would run out of ideas. But I am really enjoying this tier and the different types of bosses we have.

[huth]

Um, yes, 10 mans absolutely had dumbed down mechanics because they COULD make them vastly easier. 10 mans are the reason we no longer have fights that require more than 2 MAYBE 3 tanks on 25 man, the reasons we can't require abilities that go too far outside of the box because 'oh gosh 10 man might not have that ability', things like that. LFR is the same mechanics just tuned to the level you can ignore them, that's easy to do. You can do that to literally ANY mechanic in the game. You can't however have a mechanic like four horseman without flat out changing it (which is also why it had to change from 40 to 25)

If anything, they actually started doing it more again. There are more fights requiring more than 2 tanks in T14 than in the previous three tiers together.

[Halicia]

Personally, I'm sick of raids where EVERY fight has to be a gimmick. I'd much rather see a higher bosscount with a few 'simple' bosses... tank and spank... or 'kill the boss while dealing with waves of adds'.

gimmicks are fun as a break from the ordinary, but when they became the norm... they lose their luster.

[MoanaLisa]

Re: Designing LFR First

Here's a member of the raid design team from just a few days ago which should some distance towards settling this. It seems they don't.

In general, we start out with just an across-the-board reduction to health and damage compared to Normal mode, and then rely on feedback (and our own experiences -- many of you have probably had encounter devs in your LFR raids over the course of the past days!) to make more fundamental adjustments to mechanics that are proving particularly problematic.

That would strongly seem to imply they design it normal/heroic and then adjust LFR afterwards. There's certainly nothing at all there to suggest they do it exactly the opposite way that you seem to imagine they do. And to be honest, editing and designing a raid from complex to simple makes more sense than the reverse. It's quicker, easier and always cleaner to cut stuff out than to add things. At the end of the day if they can't make any of the mechanics work, they can turn it into a straightforward stand-still tank and spank.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...ms-lfr/#post14

[Deathquoi]

Designed with LFR in mind and designed around LFR are completely different ideas.

Watered down is vague. I'd agree that fights nowadays still present a challenge. On that basis they are not watered down, and my argument has nothing to do with difficulty. But they provide a challenge in a different way. The mentally-stimulating "puzzle" that raiding used to be did get watered down, and your argument that this tier isn't watered down means (to me) that you weren't addressing this context of your statement. The "how" of the encounter solution is already solved, everyone knows how to beat every fight. Its simply a matter of following other's footsteps, which can be a challenge, but isn't as mentally stimulating.

What are you even arguing at this point? At what point was there a mentally stimulating puzzle? Are you trying to pretend that there weren't strategy guides for every fight of every raid since forever? You're making arguments that A) aren't based in fact and B) don't make sense. Also, not "addressing this context of [my] statement?" What the fuck does that even mean? Please start stringing sentences together correctly.

[Bryntrollian]

Honestly, 10man has a much larger impact on raid mechanics than lfr ever will.

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

I argue that 10 man does this more than LFR does. Mechanics are watered down because they can't assume anything about comps, it's EASY to make a mechanic that is just trivial on LFR. For instance, make the weapons not relevent on LFR Kael'thas. Boom, fight's the same. 10 man version of Kael'thas? Becomes a lot more watered down, not enough bodies to fulfill the roles necessary. Same thing with Vashj, you could easily turn it into an LFR fight, but a 10 man version would have to actually be legitimately different.

This was fine when 10 man was sold as the easier product, a role LFR fills now, and they could just make the mechanics simpler for 10, but when they purport to peddle balance between the sizes it actually hobbles raid design. My point isn't necessarily that 10 man is bad or whatever else, but different sizes have more effect on mechanic diversity than different difficulties do - You can ALWAYS dumb a mechanic down, scaling is tougher.

this is actually a really good point i honestly hadn't really thought that much about before.

What faction champions did you kill?
- Cause the ones I killed, were very easy. Blizzard failed miserably on Faction champions.
And some of the other fights you mention was a joke too compared to some of the fights we see today.


I'm in a 10man guild, and Must say the fights are alot harder today imo.
Sure there isnt a huge amount of mechanics on all of them. But really, theres alot more to take into account.
Take tanks for example.. Kiting, tauting of eachother, managing active mitigation, and still do competetive dps.
Dps has to dispel, interrupt, cc, kite, switch targets, and do insane dps.
Healers, they really have to be focused. Some fights have heavy AoE damage, others have serious spike damage. managing raid CDs.
All of this plus everybody has to worry about overall mechanics.

You dont strike me as a guy who's that far in Heroic content. No offense.


Plus some of the things we're seeing in 5.2 is pretty cool too..

There have been cool mechanics in this tier of raiding. There have been hard mechanics in this tier of raiding. There look to be cool, and hard, mechanics in the next tier of raiding too. If you actually read my post you'd see that neither have much to do with my point.

Faction champions was a perfect example of an incredibly easy encounter that still required raiders to leave their comfort zones to complete. The TYPE of difficulty is what I'm talking about. The TYPE of absolutely essential group cooperation and tactical planning and puzzle solving required to kill it. Even if its not a difficult fight.

Mechanics nowadays are way more elaborated and complicated tham ever realy ppl, whats the deal with all this complaints about how the game was harder on the past, it wasnt, raiding wit 39 other ppl was what made it dificult mechanics were dumb simple, BC mechanics werent as elaborated as the ones we see today either (save for Kael).

How exactly is heroic Vizier not outside the box ? Amber shaper construct stuf ? Freaking tsulong having a phase were you deal damage healling and one were you actualy hit him (essentialy getting the idea they used on Valithria and making it even more elaborated) ? Even Stone Guards tank swap mechanics are pretty darn outside the box.

And have you even seen the Throne of Thunder bosses ? You want more complexity tham Durumu realy ? Didi you read the journal on Lei Shen heroic, I can feel the pain from jsut reading that.

And please dont use Kael as example for anythign that fight is just way way way too overelaborated, blizz know that and they never even atempted somethign close to that craziness, even heroic LK wich I consider to be the hardest boss ever wasnt as overly elaborated as Kael, hes realy overkilling it, explainign that figth to anyone takes liek 2 hours.

To the guy above me 10 mans never had dumbed down mechanics in relation to 25s even on Wrath, what amde 10 mans easier was the tuning, if on a 25 man you needed like 10k dps per dpser on a 10 youd need 8, healing was also easier tanks were less likely to die and such. And also ppl would gear on 25s and do 10 mans wich completly trivialised the thing. Mechanics were always the exact same (and because of this a bunch of 25 guilds used to train mechanics for 25s on multiples 10 on thse bosses with limited atempts) . And plz dont compare 10 mans of wrath with LFR theres a world of diference...

The over-elaborate fights are my whole point, but not just in and of itself. Over-elaborate in that raiders had more role responsibility than just their healing, dps, or tanking role. There were subjectives to deal with. When I said "outside the box" i'm not just talking about unique, or even just fun/hard/etc mechanics. I'm talking about open-ended mechanics. Heroic Vizier is a really fun fight, but at the end of of the day you're still following a cookie cutter pattern to win (now, if the original version was altered to be possible instead of just removing the extra echos, it could have been different).

[huth]

The over-elaborate fights are my whole point, but not just in and of itself. Over-elaborate in that raiders had more role responsibility than just their healing, dps, or tanking role. There were subjectives to deal with. When I said "outside the box" i'm not just talking about unique, or even just fun/hard/etc mechanics. I'm talking about open-ended mechanics. Heroic Vizier is a really fun fight, but at the end of of the day you're still following a cookie cutter pattern to win (now, if the original version was altered to be possible instead of just removing the extra echos, it could have been different).

I'd like you to give just one example of a fight in WoW where that ever happened. Because i can't remember any.

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

What are you even arguing at this point? At what point was there a mentally stimulating puzzle? Are you trying to pretend that there weren't strategy guides for every fight of every raid since forever? You're making arguments that A) aren't based in fact and B) don't make sense. Also, not "addressing this context of [my] statement?" What the fuck does that even mean? Please start stringing sentences together correctly.

There have been fights before, that even with all the guides in the world, groups had to think of their own ways to handle them. The fight has too many variables to predict and explain how every single one of them will play out and how to handle each of them, a guide is just a start for those kinds of fights. Nowadays you can pretty much copy a guide move for move and the fight just becomes the difficulty of following the guide rather than the creative process of overcoming the onslaught of obtuse mechanics. THAT'S the example of my point.

---------- Post added 2013-02-17 at 11:48 AM ----------

I'd like you to give just one example of a fight in WoW where that ever happened. Because i can't remember any.

Executus, 4HM, Kaelthas, Illidari Council, Faction Champions, Heroic Anub, 10m Nefarian, 10m Heroic Conclave

[Deleted]

I felt like it was that way in DS, as nearly every boss had very few mechanics which people needed to worry about.
Like... 2 phases max for every fight.
If this is true and not just a coincidence I think they only tested the waters. Because in this tier bosses actually are mechanically difficult.

Rephrasing: Even if it did limit their development it does no longer.

[Beefhammer]

Designed with LFR in mind and designed around LFR are completely different ideas.

Watered down is vague. I'd agree that fights nowadays still present a challenge. On that basis they are not watered down, and my argument has nothing to do with difficulty. But they provide a challenge in a different way. The mentally-stimulating "puzzle" that raiding used to be did get watered down, and your argument that this tier isn't watered down means (to me) that you weren't addressing this context of your statement. The "how" of the encounter solution is already solved, everyone knows how to beat every fight. Its simply a matter of following other's footsteps, which can be a challenge, but isn't as mentally stimulating.

I think the Garalon encounter proves you wrong. It was nearly impossible on LFR for groups of non raiders who knew nothing of the fight. Blizzard nerfed it a bit to make it even easier. But if they had any consideration towards LFR when making encounters Garalon would not be they way it is now. Hell go back to DS and look at the DW fights. Those were early LFR killers when you had no DS experienced players early on as well.

[DakonBlackblade]

Um, yes, 10 mans absolutely had dumbed down mechanics because they COULD make them vastly easier. 10 mans are the reason we no longer have fights that require more than 2 MAYBE 3 tanks on 25 man, the reasons we can't require abilities that go too far outside of the box because 'oh gosh 10 man might not have that ability', things like that. LFR is the same mechanics just tuned to the level you can ignore them, that's easy to do. You can do that to literally ANY mechanic in the game. You can't however have a mechanic like four horseman without flat out changing it (which is also why it had to change from 40 to 25)

So your problem is you want fights where you have to use 3 + tanks, now answer em what exactly does that change apart form the afct that you now have 3 + tanks tanking 3 + stuf... its like heroic shek zeer before they nerfed her a bit she delt so much damage you need a bazillion healers but that changes nothign other tham the fact you need to bring extra healers.

[huth]

Executus, 4HM, Kaelthas, Illidari Council, Faction Champions, Heroic Anub, 10m Nefarian, 10m Heroic Conclave

Sorry, but how is any of those an example of what you're complaining is gone? Especially Executus and 4HM, which was essentially just tank and spank with the latter requiring a ridiculous amount of tank.