Is "casual engagement" really to blame?

[Glorious Leader]

You and I both know that the forum response on the raiding boards to nerfing T15 right now to make it better for casual guilds will be a loud annoying storm of protest about catering to casuals and bads. Deny it if you wish but the few will drown out the sensible because that's what they do. And that's a problem if you really want Blizzard to hear you

I care not for the rabble of forum posters who insist that punitive normal raids are somehow the best thing ever and raid difficulty is the only measure of a raids worth. Can you answer why the raid achievement for NORMAL ToT is called "Ahead of The Curve". Does that not suggest the developers also acknowledge that this tier is also overtuned and overly difficult for the majority of players raiding in this game?

[MoanaLisa]

I care not for the rabble of forum posters who insist that punitive normal raids are somehow the best thing ever and raid difficulty is the only measure of a raids worth. Can you answer why the raid achievement for NORMAL ToT is called "Ahead of The Curve". Does that not suggest the developers also acknowledge that this tier is also overtuned and overly difficult for the majority of players raiding in this game?

It's impolitic for me to say so I guess but I don't care much for the rabble of forum posters who insist their point of view is the only valid one.

"Ahead of the Curve": If the curve is defined as LFR which contains the large majority of people in T15, then Normal raids are indeed ahead of that curve. I'm not going to read hidden meanings into it or theorize in any way that Blizzard is taunting the raiding community with the name of an achievement. Nor should you really. I suppose I can count on you to extract something out of what I intended as a thoughtful post and attach a conspiracy theory to it.

[Glorious Leader]

It's impolitic for me to say so I guess but I don't care much for the rabble of forum posters who insist their point of view is the only valid one.

"Ahead of the Curve": If the curve is defined as LFR which contains the large majority of people in T15, then Normal raids are indeed ahead of that curve. I'm not going to read hidden meanings into it or theorize in any way that Blizzard is taunting the raiding community with the name of an achievement. Nor should you really. I suppose I can count on you to extract something out of what I intended as a thoughtful post and attach a conspiracy theory to it.

Normal should imply that the average player belongs in the curve. The completion of a normal mode would suggest a player was within the curve. If the achievement for heroic was ahead of the curve it would make total sense. If I was a new player and I saw that I would get the feeling that not only was I not "ahead of the curve" I was probably also not good enough for normals either.

[MoanaLisa]

Normal should imply that the average player belongs in the curve. The completion of a normal mode would suggest a player was within the curve. If the achievement for heroic was ahead of the curve it would make total sense. If I was a new player and I saw that I would get the feeling that not only was I not "ahead of the curve" I was probably also not good enough for normals either.

If you were a new player, just about every serious raiding guild out there would absolutely think that you probably weren't good enough for normals. That's been the case for a long time now. Why do you imagine that guild poaching was such an item in BC? It wasn't because there weren't a lot of new players around. It was because guilds didn't want to be bothered to bring someone along. This is not a new thing.

[Bigbamboozal]

I would argue that this whole thread is invalid due to the loss of subs being entirely centralized in asia.
Feel free to tell me I am wrong, but you best have a good reason and proof, maybe some pie charts ect. Or you gonna get hosed with reality, common sense, non fiction, and some other words.

[Glorious Leader]

If you were a new player, just about every serious raiding guild out there would absolutely think that you probably weren't good enough for normals. That's been the case for a long time now. Why do you imagine that guild poaching was such an item in BC? It wasn't because there weren't a lot of new players around. It was because guilds didn't want to be bothered to bring someone along. This is not a new thing.

It was a problem in BC not because new players were good or bad but because they needed attunments and those raids were lazy to go back. They were also to lazy to go back and farm him gear. Catchup and the removal of attunements pretty much eliminated that.

[NeverStop]

I think they want people to develop mods (it's essentially free UI work for Blizzard), but at the same time they have the problem you described.

They need to make it easier for everyone to get mods, and for the mods to work better. I think they should integrate a mod shop into the game, something like the Curse Client but integrated. It could even charge RL $ for the mods (some going to the mod creators, some to Blizzard).

Blizzard already does many things to combat DBM. One of them is mechanics having random target(s) that include your entire raid. This means each person has to be ready to handle the mechanic when it goes out. See Amber Shaper randomly transforming a person during the Monstrosity phase. Lei Shen also has this element during the transitions. Which section gets the mechanic as well as which player in that section gets it are both random, so DBM is less useful here other than telling you "in X seconds someone in the raid other than the tanks is going to have to handle Static Shock."

[MoanaLisa]

It was a problem in BC not because new players were good or bad but because they needed attunments and those raids were lazy to go back. They were also to lazy to go back and farm him gear. Catchup and the removal of attunements pretty much eliminated that.

Many of the worst are still lazy (which was a major part of my post). What I see are ads wanting people that are already geared and have experience. No pikers need apply.

[Glorious Leader]

Many of the worst are still lazy (which was a major part of my post).

Which has nothing to do with skill and why guilds would refuse to take a new player or not. Guilds poached players because it was easier not because everybody was a bad and they were surronded by filth.

[Theendgamelv3]

Big debate this. I'd contend that normal raiding has been too difficult since WotLK. For me? Perhaps not. For the community at large?

WoW Progress definitely suggests so.

Smaller player base = not as many guilds progressing and LFR has taken a chunk of players who don't want to do normals anymore due to time. They probably went YES to LFR and probably quick normal raiding. To say that normal raiding has been too hard and that is the reason.....I don't know, it could be a factor too, but it isn't IMO the biggest factor. With that said, if you made 10m as easy as they were in Wrath, I doubt there would be that much of a increase in raiding as a whole again. That takes time still that probably unlike in the past a lot of people don't have time for anymore. Do you screw off the guilds and players who like 10m hard? I mean people say casuals wanted this and got it, well I doubt casuals went "OMG WE WANT HARDER 10M!, that sounds like more hardcore players. With that said, the casual 10m scene isn't in a good point as it was in Wrath. Yes LFR is easy, but it isn't the same as hanging out with 10 guildies who don't raid that seriously. Blizzard does have a choice here, make 10m at the levels of wrath again, pissing off the hardcores or leaving it alone cause I doubt LFR is going anywhere.

[TirielWoW]

The guys I carried back in WotLK weren't a burden; THEY WERE MY FRIENDS. Playing with friends is NEVER a burden.

I wish I could like this a million times.

[Users]

Best post of the year right here.

[Vash The Stampede]

The Wii is a testament to how casuals work. At first Nintendo made a boat load of money off casuals, and they catered to them properly. But casuals only stick around for so long. They eventually get bored of it, and fade away. To be frank, they'll never come back. The problem is that casuals pretty much want everything handed to them on a plate. Anything too difficult, and they get turned off.

So Blizzard decided in WOTLK with Naxx to make raids easy, which generally made everyone who wasn't casual, mad. So they slowly introduced hard modes, and now Heroic modes. In which Blizzard introduced essentially a difficulty setting to WoW. That in of itself was a huge mistake. Biggest mistake was introducing LFR, which was super easy mode for casuals. By doing what Blizzard has done, they have removed incentive in their game.

You'll never make casuals happy, but now the core audience of WoW isn't happy either. Cause, if everyone can just do LFR and see all the content, then why raid? Games today are generally doing this, and I'm pissed off about it. Games are fun when they are challenging, and I overcome something. Game developers are too concerned that they may piss off their customers, so they make it easy enough for anyone to finish the game. Which is why a difficulty setting is a terrible thing to introduce to your game. Cause most people will do the game in normal or easy mode, beat it, and then throw it away.

See, Dark Souls is a good example of how to do it right. The game is hard, and it becomes engaging. Suddenly you have a reason to grind out gear, and learn new techniques and skills. It requires observation, lateral thinking, and experimentation. Above all, patience. WoW's only incentive is to beat other people on meters, and even then not really. You can kill Lei Shen, just fail at LFR 5 times and you'll see him dead, and get phat loots. This is a problem cause why do normal or even Heroic raids, when all the same loot is given out in LFR?

In my opinion, Blizzard needs to go back to Vanilla and TBC style raiding. It should be hard. It should have one difficulty setting. It should be for those dedicated enough to work with 9 or 24 other people extremely well. Cause right now Blizzard is trying to make everyone happy, and that never works out. You'll just make everyone made at you. Also, Blizzard seriously needs to fix realm population problems. I can see the reason not to merge realms, but they need to do something drastic. Without players, this game gets useless to play by yourself, which leads to people canceling subscriptions.

Either...

A. Give everyone a 1 month cool down free transfer to any realm they want. Just let the players decide where to go. Yea, they won't make money from server transfers, but that needed to stop long time ago. I mean $25 for a server transfer is extortion. It's that or spend months leveling up another toon, and then gearing it.

B. Cross Realm EVERYTHING. As it is right now, cross realm zones have no benefits to low population realms. They just invite players from high pop realms to take resources in your realm. Cross realm should apply to Auction houses, raids, guilds, and everything in between.

[Users]

Someone needs to repost this on the official forums. Hopefully someone from Blizz has already read this though

[Theendgamelv3]

The Wii is a testament to how casuals work. At first Nintendo made a boat load of money off casuals, and they catered to them properly. But casuals only stick around for so long. They eventually get bored of it, and fade away. To be frank, they'll never come back. The problem is that casuals pretty much want everything handed to them on a plate. Anything too difficult, and they get turned off.

So Blizzard decided in WOTLK with Naxx to make raids easy, which generally made everyone who wasn't casual, mad. So they slowly introduced hard modes, and now Heroic modes. In which Blizzard introduced essentially a difficulty setting to WoW. That in of itself was a huge mistake. Biggest mistake was introducing LFR, which was super easy mode for casuals. By doing what Blizzard has done, they have removed incentive in their game.

You'll never make casuals happy, but now the core audience of WoW isn't happy either. Cause, if everyone can just do LFR and see all the content, then why raid? Games today are generally doing this, and I'm pissed off about it. Games are fun when they are challenging, and I overcome something. Game developers are too concerned that they may piss off their customers, so they make it easy enough for anyone to finish the game. Which is why a difficulty setting is a terrible thing to introduce to your game. Cause most people will do the game in normal or easy mode, beat it, and then throw it away.

See, Dark Souls is a good example of how to do it right. The game is hard, and it becomes engaging. Suddenly you have a reason to grind out gear, and learn new techniques and skills. It requires observation, lateral thinking, and experimentation. Above all, patience. WoW's only incentive is to beat other people on meters, and even then not really. You can kill Lei Shen, just fail at LFR 5 times and you'll see him dead, and get phat loots. This is a problem cause why do normal or even Heroic raids, when all the same loot is given out in LFR?

In my opinion, Blizzard needs to go back to Vanilla and TBC style raiding. It should be hard. It should have one difficulty setting. It should be for those dedicated enough to work with 9 or 24 other people extremely well. Cause right now Blizzard is trying to make everyone happy, and that never works out. You'll just make everyone made at you. Also, Blizzard seriously needs to fix realm population problems. I can see the reason not to merge realms, but they need to do something drastic. Without players, this game gets useless to play by yourself, which leads to people canceling subscriptions.

Either...

A. Give everyone a 1 month cool down free transfer to any realm they want. Just let the players decide where to go. Yea, they won't make money from server transfers, but that needed to stop long time ago. I mean $25 for a server transfer is extortion. It's that or spend months leveling up another toon, and then gearing it.

B. Cross Realm EVERYTHING. As it is right now, cross realm zones have no benefits to low population realms. They just invite players from high pop realms to take resources in your realm. Cross realm should apply to Auction houses, raids, guilds, and everything in between.

Normal raiding is "hard". Have you seen the posts on MMO champion on how people think it is overtuned? How many people will see Ra-den. The very fact he won't been seen by everyone means that there is incentive. What about the achievement mount? So casuals won't and get everything. The thing is, what is casual? I consider myself casual, yet I wouldn't give up the game if I saw normal Lei Shin. I don't remember Paragon going "omg STUPID CASUALS! They'll get to see EVERYTHING!" Blizzard didn't like the fact they made places like Naxx and only less than a % saw it. They put all that hard work for what for a few hundred to a thousand players? They wanted more players to see the content they were making and that is what they did. You say that difficulty modes in games are bad, WOW you are wrong. If that was the case, why do game makers to this VERY day still have that feature? You bring up Dark Souls, I bring up God of War series, Gears of War Series, Uncharted series, Halo series, etc. Those game have a difficulty setting and obviously sold fine with them.The thing is unlike you, I believe the raid difficulty is fine where it is and that other factors were the reason why people left like the age of the game, dead servers, people just getting older and not having the time, etc.

[Vash The Stampede]

Normal raiding is "hard". Have you seen the posts on MMO champion on how people think it is overtuned? How many people will see Ra-den. The very fact he won't been seen by everyone means that there is incentive.

A lot of the fight mechanics are similar to those in previous dungeons. For example, Durumu is a lot like Fire Fighter in Ulduar. I found the fights to be rather easy. Haven't seen Heroic modes yet though.

Back in Vanilla, I remember seeing Paladins with Judgement gear and thinking, "I gotta have that". You had to raid. Now anyone can have similar looking loot, but colored differently. Ra-den isn't enough incentive. Maybe if he dropped something bad-ass, like weapons. Most of the stuff he drops is junk. Higher ilvl junk, but junk.

What about the achievement mount?

Nobody cares about mounts. So damn many that look alike too.

So casuals won't and get everything. The thing is, what is casual? I consider myself casual, yet I wouldn't give up the game if I saw normal Lei Shin.

It's a strange word, cause there's no clear definition of casual. To me it's...

A. A person who logs into WoW whenever they want. Can't dedicate logging in at raid time consistently.

B. Finds certain content too hard, or too challenging.

C. Believes in entitlement to areas of the game, even if they haven't earned it.

Blizzard didn't like the fact they made places like Naxx and only less than a % saw it. They put all that hard work for what for a few hundred to a thousand players? They wanted more players to see the content they were making and that is what they did. You say that difficulty modes in games are bad, WOW you are wrong.

I am never wrong, everyone just isn't right.

The people that won't get to see content, never really played the game to begin with. If you did, then you would get to see content. You want to see the ending in a game, then you need to beat the boss. Otherwise it's like buying a game, and then going on YouTube to see the ending. The journey is the reward, not the destination.

If that was the case, why do game makers to this VERY day still have that feature? You bring up Dark Souls, I bring up God of War series, Gears of War Series, Uncharted series, Halo series, etc. Those game have a difficulty setting and obviously sold fine with them.

Just cause a lot of games sold well, doesn't make it right. Doom had a difficulty setting, but it wasn't horribly abused. Lets put it like this, LFR in Cataclysm was so easy that a lot of people I know, would do them just to try and fail the groups. It wasn't easy to fail at LFR. It was, a lot like this really.

Given that Pandaria LFR's are much harder then Cata versions, since you can fail very easily. Except now when you die, you get a fail buff. A stack-able fail buff, that works a lot like this really.

The thing is unlike you, I believe the raid difficulty is fine where it is and that other factors were the reason why people left like the age of the game, dead servers, people just getting older and not having the time, etc.

There are more important reasons why people left, but difficulty is certainly one of them. Raids maybe fine in difficulty, but raids aren't the only area. Remember, Heroic 5 mans aren't really Heroics anymore. They're just given that name now. LFR, has in my opinion, ruined the interest for normal and heroic raiding for a lot of people. If I had to list reasons why people left, these would be it, in ascending order.

#1 Low people realms. <-- Seriously, wtf is taking them so long to fix this?
#2 Class balance issues. Nobody likes being underpowered. Overpowered likes to stay overpowered.
#3 Time it takes to gear up. This should really be a huge concern for new players, as they have a longer catch up time. They might get turned off and quit. ]
#4 Difficulty. I came, I saw, I conquered, I quit.
#5 Real life issues.

[Aliessil]

Several posters have suggested that normal raids are over-tuned at the moment, and I've got to agree. They're okay if you play with dedicated raiders, but if you're more interested in playing with friends ... forget it (unless they're all dedicated raiders).

Personally I'd prefer that normal modes get tuned down, but have hard-mode mechanics built into them (like the towers on Flame Leviathan in Ulduar). Mechanics which can be bypassed if you want, or included to make the encounter more challenging. I think it's things like this which made Ulduar so popular, but don't seem to have been implemented since.

Failing that, an alternative I'd like to see is a 10-man LFR option. I'm from a small, "friends and family" guild where a lot of our members have never been raiders and have complicated schedules. We'd love a 10-man LFR which we could run as a (mostly) guild group. The trouble with 25man LFR is some of the other players in there. For instance a couple of months ago we took a new tank with us and joined as a group of 9. The other tank pulled before we even had chance to explain what was going on, pulled the boss before the trash was dead and then initiated a vote-kick on our tank. It succeeded, and we all had to drop group and queue again. This happened 3 times before we finally found another tank who'd give us a chance to explain what was going on.

LFR isn't difficult, but learning how to tank all 3 bosses from a website/video when you've never seen the fight .. it's easy enough when you can get a quick refresh before each boss, but when everything's being chain-pulled and you don't get a chance to do anything before the next pull - that's asking a bit much.

So yeah, TLDR:
1) Make normal raids easier, but incorporate more hard-mode options, or
2) Add a 10man LFR

[LurkerOnly]

I think the OP is basically correct. My guild was composed of about 4 players who had been in competitive raiding guilds but lost the taste for the hassle involved, who carried the other 6 through 10 man content whenever all 6 of them were available in the same week. Those 6 weren't awful or anything, they just didn't have time to put into becoming excellent. The 4 of us that had more time to invest were more than happy to let the other 6 (all of which had children and full-time jobs that made it so we didn't mind if they couldn't show up for raid night) do their best so that we could all have a challenge (the 4 better players' challenge was doing it with undergeared or underexperienced teammates, the 6 less good players challenged in that raiding isn't easy if you don't do it all the time). If our entire guild didn't show up, we often teamed up with one of half a dozen other similar guilds on Bloodhoof. There wasn't a week that we weren't raiding, often several times.

Cataclyms and Mists made it so our people that didn't have time, didn't have the gear to perform. They tried their best to do well (one lost her job because she was trying to keep up with raiding, which was sad, luckily she got it back the next week), and the 4 of us that were more used to competitive raiding tried out best to keep carrying the extra weight, but the game had changed too much. We were no longer able to help other than directly in the encounters, and 4 people can't carry 6 (even if they want to) easily anymore, possibly not at all anymore. Not to mention the BoP crafting mats making it so we couldn't work together with our busier guildmates to collect the mats to craft them gear. 4 of us collecting enough Chaos Orbs or whatever they even are anymore to craft the other 6 members all their gear? Nightmare in the modern game.

Part of the social experience, in my guild, was people working together to accomplish something. Getting my guildmates to make sure not to screw up mechanics because they really, sincerely wanted to make it as easy as possible for the 4 of us who were doing most of the work was a bonding experience. They appreciated us helping them do something they'd have never done without us, we appreciated them for letting us raid without being forced into what the competitive raiding scene started to be in mid-Wrath.

Now, there's nobody in my guild, they've all quit the game, because they just didn't have time in their lives to devote so much to gearing and raiding, and we can't just carry them anymore. 3/250 is our average attendance per week.

You can say "those bads just didn't want to try hard enough", and I'll say "I, as the guild leader, didn't want them to spend all week gearing up like it was a job. I wanted them to be able to log in the one night they had time and go raid with us for _fun_ because they worked hard enough in real life."

Not everyone in the game is in that position, but in my experience many are. They want to play, can only play a little, and they'd LOVE to go with you if you'll have them, but now they can't because it's impossible for you to carry them when the only gear they can reasonably get is quest blues, because they get 4 hours a week.

We liked carrying our friends in our guild. Now the game forces us to see them as sub-class citizens by telling me how much rep they have with my guild (not much, because they can't get on much) despite the fact that they've been officers since BC, by telling me they don't have enough gear to roll with us, by telling me they don't have enough gold to keep up.

That's jacked up, at least in my opinion.

[Pua]

I really enjoyed your post, MoanaLisa, forgive the way I cut it up; it's just my style.

While there have always been and remain a loud crowd of people that want LFR to simply go away [unlikely] the more thoughtful frequently wrote something to the effect of "Well, now that it's here, there's no reason not to make normal mode raiding more difficult."

...You and I both know that the forum response on the raiding boards to nerfing T15 right now to make it better for casual guilds will be a loud annoying storm of protest about catering to casuals and bads. Deny it if you wish but the few will drown out the sensible because that's what they do. And that's a problem if you really want Blizzard to hear you.

I know what you're saying about the Blizzard view, and it's perfectly logical, but LFR is simply not a substitute for those who enjoyed doing progression with their friends. And I've said it before, so don't mind repetition, those wanting a harder set of normal modes are in the extreme minority. They're simply very, very vocal. What worries me is that Blizzard can surely see what's going on with this raiding model, and they're sticking to it in fear of a forum backlash.

There are better ways to do this.

LFR is for those that just can't make a schedule. Fine. Heroic modes are for those who want to bang their head against a wall and see a raid punished for a single error. Normal mode should be for players that get together and want to do some progression, but not see one person causing a wipe. A further solution could be to make relatively easy normal modes, but also use the mount achievements as the intermediate settings. I've still yet to see a single good explanation as to why the mount achievements cover all the heroic modes. I'd imagine that's because there isn't a good reason for it.

It's true that DBM and its imitators have become a crucial and necessary piece of the game. It's unfortunate and for many of the same reasons why I don't like reporting addons generally (damage/healing meters in particular). But I think it's also fair to say that Blizzard is in a tough spot here with regard to encounter design.

I completely agree. It's a horrible position. Another poster has pointed out that Blizzard is now using mechanics that target people randomly so that everyone still needs to be aware of what's happening, but that's another hammer to the heart of playing with less skilled friends. Previously, you could get your stronger players to handle the more awkward and challenging mechanics and let your less skilled players tunnel. This is how you get the best out of your team, and it was successful. Now... Impossible. Learn the fight or GTFO.

I see a lot of guild ads on realm forums and in Trade and I have yet to see an ad for a raiding guild, progression or otherwise, that was encouraging casual, even new players, to apply. That's their business of course but if they want to be extremely selective and largely closed to average players, even those who wish to move up, that's their own fault and they shouldn't complain about recruiting.

I think this is the strongest part of your post. This isn't a new issue, of course, but new guilds sprang up during WotLK and had a go at some raiding (relatively successfully) and the better players moved on once these new guilds stopped meeting their needs. That's dead now. You can't pick someone up from LFR and put them into normal Lei Shen heroic without it being a massive risk.

The first pass at CRZ was specifically not supposed to address the issue of low-population servers. They said this. So I don't consider it a fair criticism to make that it didn't do this. Perhaps in the future it might. We need cross-realm guilds and cross-realm raiding on current tier to be perfectly honest. That's another huge shift for guilds and one that will undoubtedly have a lot of unintended consequences both good and bad. But I think it needs to happen since the raiding community has marginalized itself nearly out of existence with their inability to open up.

Fair enough. Unfortunately, my view on CRZ is that it was simply a PR exercise to hold off from closing servers. WoW is still the best MMORPG on the market, easily the most successful, and despite a few missteps it's still a great game. Considering the hand-wringing that goes on for the slightest of changes, the murmurs of discontent would turn to a cacophony if they took the step of merging dead servers.

That said, the "super server" is something that might yet happen to WoW as a result of CRZ so that could potentially be a solution. We'll have to see.

Talent/glyph redesign caused some homogenization to be sure. I think the talents are better than before just so you know where I'm coming from on that. The previous talent system as has been pointed out ad nauseum gave you no choices at all until you got to the end and had a couple of points to assign to usually trivial and unnecessary talents. I don't really have much of an opinion about glyphs. The move to make them more cosmetic is fine by me. For all intents and purposes, the current talent system isn't any different than your top level glyphs from previous expansions. However, I still think it's a success.

Honestly, I know why people say they like the new system, but I think it's an utter flunk. Maybe it's because I'm a career Protection warrior who's always enjoyed playing with his own talents, but I change my talents and glyphs less now than I have since the launch of Wrath.

What I object to is people parroting Ghostcrawler and telling me I'm wrong and that I definitely have more choice now.

I, personally, don't. To me, the system is a bust.

[Crashdummy]

The blame is on Blizzard. They tried to cater to the hardcore in Cataclysm and was a complete failure, they tried to cater to the hardcore again in MoP with the huge grinds, the uber gating, the huge normal raiding difficulty and by not providing ANY effective catch up machanism, by not making old vp gear turn to justioce, etc, etc, etc, and the only thing they did for casuals was to fix the very few 5 man dungeons they broke in Cataclysm.

Everything else in MoP was done for hardcores, hell, they even made some LFR fights asks for a stupid amount of coordination, all because hardcores were crying that they bore in a difficulty where they shouldnt be in the first place.

They need to go back to make the game for casuals again and stop this non-sense.