How I would change Raiding - An idea to break the mould.

[Deleted]

What ho,

If you, like me, think that raiding in WoW is rather poor; read on. If you disagree; read on anyway.
The fact is that raiding in WoW is great as a concept, but is poorly implemented. Repeating the same raid on each tier is very tedious after a while, and it does create the infamous 'gear treadmill'.

Isn't it a shame that Blizzard spends so much resources with every expansion just to sate our need for new raids, only to have them work so poorly? We burn through them, we burn out, and we get annoyed with them. If raiding was to be re-worked, I argue that Blizzard would save time and money (which could be invested into other features), and you would have more fun.

Another issue is that the new lore introduced in new raids always has to compete with the fact that you want to beat the raid as fast as possible. This is a shame, because you should be able to powergame, but you shouldn't have to give up on immersion.

So here's my idea...

• Two forms of raiding; Current Raid and Legacy Raid
• Current Raids drop item loot like usual; Legacy Raids drop tokens that you use at a vendor
• They complement each other: one emphasises slow progression through current lore and content; the other focuses on offering you something to do every week
• Read on to understand how this system will let Blizzard invest more time into quality rather than quantity with each expansion.

CURRENT RAIDS

The so-called 'Current Raid' is an slightly similar to the raiding we have today in the sense that it is the most recent and relevant raiding experience released by Blizzard. It has HC, N, and LFR difficulty modes like today - and it drops loot like today as well. However, it is both slower and longer than raids of today. Here are the rules:

• With every major patch, Blizzard releases a new 'Current Raid' (i.e. roughly 3 raids per expansion).
• Each 'Current Raid' dungeon will include at least a dozen bosses and feature rich, engaging story lines relevant to current lore.
• One (1) boss will be unlocked every week.
• Once a boss is defeated, it stays dead as long as the raid is classified as 'Current Raid'. This means that you can fight at most one 'Current Raid' boss a week, unless you save them all until they've all been unlocked near the end of the current patch.
• Every defeated boss in a 'Current Raid' will feel like a true victory. Loot will be interesting, story lines will evolve, and new quests will take you out in the world to prepare for the next boss.
• 'World 1st' will still exist, but it will be slower than it is today.
• Defeating the final boss will grant you an achievement, and effectively end that raid cycle.
• The raid will then be converted from a 'Current Raid' and instead become a 'Legacy Raid'.
• This effectively means that a raid with 12 bosses will have a life span of about 2 and a half months.
• The end of a 'Current Raid' cycle means a break from 'Current Raids' for a while, and marks the release of a minor patch with non-raid related content.
• Once the next major patch hits, a new 'Current Raid' is released. Think of them like seasons, or cycles. Or ladders, ha.

LEGACY RAIDS

The 'Legacy Raid' serves mainly as filler content between bosses in the 'Current Raid', and in the intermediate state between major patches, when there is no 'Current Raid'. These are old raids which have been scaled up and fitted with slightly updated mechanics, and are accessed through the Caverns of Time. This also justifies having bosses that are dead according to lore still in the game. Here are the rules:

• 'Legacy Raids' are always available.
• 'Legacy Raids' have a shared one week cooldown, so only one raid each week. Because of scaling, they will be difficult and take time. Sort of like raiding today. Because you have a different one every week, however, you never get sick of it.
• You can choose either a Random 'Legacy Raid' for extra rewards, or specify which one you want. Perhaps you are obsessed with the Black Temple?
• Once allotted a 'Legacy Raid', you are stuck with it until the following week.
• Loot in 'Legacy Raids' consist of tokens which you may use to purchase items from a new faction. Simple, frequent ones for normal epics - and rarer ones for legendaries and so on.
• The items you can purchase range from transmogrifiable classic gear to current high-end gear. However, the gear can never be better than the current 'Current Raid' gear. Think of it as the difference between current 'Normal' and 'Hardcore' gear.
• The high-end gear purchased comes from a vendor and is not exclusive to the raid you have done. Therefore, it can work just like other token gear in the game, with a new 'tier' with each major patch. This obviously doesn't apply to transmogrification gear.
• Lore: Sargeras have sent his Dreadlord agents back in time. Their mission is to find and consume the energy of the final bosses at the end of every dungeon (Ragnaros, Lady Vashj, C'thun, etc.). You therefore go back to the point before the bosses are defeated, find the agent, and destroy it. The first time in each 'Legacy Raid' gives you a quest to destroy its agent. Because the minions of the final boss are still alive at this point, you must fight your way to the end where you'll find the final boss and then the agent.
• 'Legacy Raids' come in 10 and 25 man sizes, much depending on their original size.
• When the feature is introduced, it comes with roughly 5-10 'Legacy Raids' all prepared for you to explore. Over time, more old raids will then be converted to the 'Legacy Raid' system. The oldest raids are first out.

CONCLUSION:


1. This system of old and new raids running parallel serves many purposes, and solves many issues.

2. It makes sure you never have to repeat the same raid, week after week, as your 'Legacy Raid' can be different every week, and your 'Current Raid' always faces you off against a new boss every week, without letting you repeat it.

3. It saves Blizzard development time: with only roughly 2-3 raids to worry about with each expansion, they can focus on making those raids and other content better instead. Few and long raids means they can re-use assets to create a lot of content, whereas many short raids would mean they have to create new assets for every setting. Converting a few old raids into 'Legacy Raids' with every expansion shouldn't be that much work, as the original assets and environments are used. Only numbers are tweaked, basically.

4. It gives you a reason and makes it easier for you to re-visit old raids. This means that you get to experience your favourite old content again, and new players get a chance to explore what you've seen in the past. Also means all the hard work Blizzard puts into raids isn't simply thrown away after a raid becomes obsolete.

5. It makes the acquisition of gear more dynamic. Instead of only focusing on the newest gear from the current raid tier like now, 'Legacy Raids' will offer you a way to acquire good gear. Works similar to tokens in the past, but is more fun.

6. Lastly, it lets you explore all new content ('Current Raids') in a slow, regulated pace. Every week, you will be able to charge rampant through a 'Legacy Raid' with your friends or strangers. But you will also have that one exciting new boss encounter every week to work on. Every week will bring new content, as it were. Then, once the 'Current Raid' is beaten and the minor patch hits, you can relax for a few weeks, knowing you're not missing out on any new, relevant raiding content. Then come back a few weeks later, re-charged.

7. Get bored while waiting for a new 'Current Raid'? Simply play a 'Legacy Raid'!

[noralya]

Just my opinion I guess, but that would be terrible

[Deleted]

Just my opinion I guess, but that would be terrible

It's terrible to have less grind, more variation, more emphasis on lore, and to never run out of new content?

Okay.

[kwakwa]

I have to agree with noralya, this idea does not seem thought out at all. Where would LFR and Heroic come into play like you said they would? would it be 100% drop on everything on the loot list or would you only get 24 pieces Per Tier of "current gear". I cannot see this system working out in the slightest and frankly only being able to kill a boss once and then its dead until it becomes a legacy raid takes alot out of the current experience, I personally enjoy going back in and killing a boss you once had trouble with easily.

[smartazjb0y]

There's really no reason to gate content at such a slow pace, in my mind. AND it's not just gating: you're actually combining a lockout system with a gating system. It's not just "we're releasing this boss later," it's "after you kill this boss, you can't kill it again until you clear it."

How does it work for Heroic raiders? Do they still have to complete normal modes before accessing Heroic modes? That means they have to wait 2.5 months to get to the content they feel is on their difficulty level. And while they're doing the requisite normal modes, they do one boss a week...and it takes them 15, 20, maybe 30 minutes to clear that normal mode boss.

Say you remove that "you have to clear normal modes to get to heroic modes" requirement. Some bosses will STILL be easier than others. Let's say Jin'Rokh was the first boss. You don't have to be a heroic world 1st guild to clear normal Jin'Rokh easily. So say it takes an hour, then you're just done for the week. No more ToT for you, even if you raid 4 hours a week, after you spend maybe an hour on an easy boss? You're done with that instance for no real reason.

Legacy Raids don't really get rid of any of the "grind." It's basically like the random 5mans we have today: sure, it's not the exact same dungeon repeated every week...but after you do a couple, or even if you've done it in the past, it still gets boring. I don't do Shado-Pan Monastery every day, but I've done it enough times that it's random.

And the loot system is kind of confusing. Is Legacy raid loot supposed to replace farming loot? So let's take ToT, for example. After it's out for 3 weeks, my group is on the 4th boss. We still go back and clear the first 3 bosses to get loot so we can survive more, do a bit more damage and healing, and progress more on that 4th boss. If you're taking out that capability in Current Raids, you can't get loot on a boss more than once a TIER. Is Legacy Raid loot supposed to take the spot of that, then?

I get the need to incorporate lore more into raids, which is an idea I love. Grinding raids is only really a problem at the end of tiers: at this rate, since Blizz is releasing raids MUCH faster, you don't have that extended period of time where the raids become grindy. So their solution is to release raids faster so you never have that lull where you cleared the instance 2 months ago and are just farming it while waiting for new raids to come out.

[xenogear3]

TL;DR

Agree that loot grind is a stupid idea.
This expansion is worse, because gear inflation is bigger.

[poogle]

Terrible idea IMO.

What happens when you want to change guilds? You're saved to boss 6 so you hands down cannot ever join a raid group before boss 6.

What about guilds who aren't beating a new boss every week? Stuck on the same enemy week after week with zero hope of getting any gear upgrades to help push it over. Unless the fights were perfectly tuned for every difficulty level this would be a nightmare once you get stuck on a boss. Not to mention the lack of gear in general. Just look at horridon - so many 10m guilds were stuck on him for weeks because he was overtuned for the 2nd boss, some managed to push past it with more gearing & practice, many only after the nerfs. I would absolutely hate to be in the position where I know 100% that my guild cannot beat a boss AND have no new content to do for weeks until they decide to put a nerf through (because with no gear drops there is no way to improve a character max'd out from the previous tier).

What about guilds who like the race? 1 boss per week completely kills that by giving all the competition 1 week to catch up every week if you are getting it on the first day, not to mention 12 weeks just to reach heroic difficulty where they actually feel a challenge. And then another 12 weeks to reach the end boss and/or heroic-only boss like Ra-Den.

What about increasing difficulty within the tier? This would have to be abandoned if you only receive a finite number of random loots before the end boss. Fights 1 and 12 would all have to be tuned around the same ilvl because you'd be lucky to pick up more than 1 item in a 10m before you hit the end boss. Knowing there is nothing you can do to improve your character between bosses would be a huge blow to the sense of character progression.

It would end up being [struggle with progress > farm + wait for new tier] vs. the mix of farm & progress most of us currently do all the way till the next tier.


The only part of the post that is a good idea is the legacy raids portion, which is something many have suggested in the past.