WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.

[Osmeric]

I think Oondasta used to be quite comparable to a normal mode encounter.

The pugs I have seen trying to down Oondasta have been downright depressing. I have never seen one succeed, although I am sure some have somewhere.

[Seezer]

There was also no LFR in Wrath, and most of Cata. Making the charts a little out of touch.

You don't need to quote the entire OP post to reply. It takes up a lot of space. -Azshira

[crakerjack]

I don't care if people find the game challenging... PvE to me... is easy. It hasn't been difficult since BT... The coordination and knowledge of the class to cast certain spells at the right time without going oom, required quite a bit of skill. I've been watching healer streams and it looks like faceroll... mana is never an issue and overhealing doesn't punish you by any means. Not only that, but you had to have certain raid comps... a certain amount of that class and such... now it really doesn't matter aside from tanks depending on their CD's. IMO, PvE content isn't difficult anymore and it doesn't matter how many charts you post... From first hand experience, I never felt as if it was challenging... Don't both asking for achievements... Quit the game and majority of my hardcore raiding was spent during vanilla/TBC before achievements.

[Keoren]

The pugs I have seen trying to down Oondasta have been downright depressing. I have never seen one succeed, although I am sure some have somewhere.

To me that just sounds like the players on the realm are not completely aware of how the encounter functions. It does not require a high level of coordination.

[Osmeric]

I thought blizzard realized that but then GC hit me with his vision how to play the game "one player = one char = one spec = one guild = one group = steady progress = getting better = fun" rationalism in his recent tweets and I just don'T care anymore.

GC is showing some signs of denial (or spin) in recent tweets. Most recently, in an exchange with our Zellviren, he explained away the low number of guilds that have downed Jin'Rokh as being due to people still gearing up, not because those guilds have given up.

But this explanation fails, since at this point an LFR hero can be at ilvl above 510, just from LFR drops, world boss drops, VP items, and VP upgrades. If a guild was serious about progressing in normal mode, they would have been doing this, and would have gotten gear far above the intended gear for J'R a long time ago. If they have not downed J'R now, it is because they either gave up gearing, or just gave up normal mode raids. In either case, they have given up. And why not; for those guilds normal mode bosses are just a thin, failure-filled, frustrating glaze on top of a mostly LFR experience.

I think GC was just giving a canned excuse there, perhaps mixed with desperate wishful thinking. It will be interesting to watch is retreat from this position, just like he (belatedly) retreated from the "hard heroic 5 man" position of early Cataclysm.

---------- Post added 2013-05-31 at 02:01 AM ----------

The fight comes down to the tanks not dying. It sounds like the players on the realm are not completely aware of how the encounter functions. It does not require a high level of coordination.

Yes, this was my impression. I won't know if they ever get better, since no one is attempting to pug that boss anymore, as far as I can tell.

[Deleted]

Great OP.

I think a rarely mentioned contributing factor to the decline of normal/heroic mode raiding is the gigantic difference in gear between what you can get from LFR, Rep, 5 mans, Cheap craftables etc.. (keep in mind it takes months to get full 502 LFR gear) and what drops in normal mode Throne of Thunder. Players who are raiding Normal Mode ToT for the first time are going to be extremely undergeared for it.

In the past players could get full epic gear from heroics that brought them within 20 ilevels of normal mode gear (and with a few valour/random quest line/rep rewards) they could usually get within 15 ilevels of normal before ever setting foot in the instance. If everyone were given 507 ilevel gear and let loose in normal mode Throne they'd probably fair a lot better than right now where they're more likely to be in 500ilevel or less if they haven't done any normal mode raiding.

The insane rate at which DPS currently scales with gear means that if you're undergeared it counts for a hell of a lot, much more than it did in WOTLK where a Naxx Geared DPS did about 4k DPS and an Ulduar geared DPS did about 6k, so a 50% increase. As opposed to now where a Tier 15 geared player does about 100k DPS and a ToT geared player does about 230k DPS, a 130% increase.

[Deleted]

Recruiting is bad because the players who can do this content with all it's complexity and manage their characters with their increasing complexity are limited. Ergo reduce the complexity of both and you'll have more potential raiders to recruits. The two go hand in hand. Your little list of stuff ignores all the stuff that players potentially struggle with (hell playing their class is so god damn bloated now compared to what it was in previous expansions) and the complexity fights only exacerbates this. Even the developers have admitted this. I don't understand why it's still an argument?

Yes I know everything is easy It's the players who are bad. Well good luck to you trying to recruit. Fights are to difficult whether or not you chose to see it. This should have never been a matter for opinion or debate. Unless you want raiding to die.

The answer is LFR.

[Deleted]

I don't care if people find the game challenging... PvE to me... is easy. It hasn't been difficult since BT... The coordination and knowledge of the class to cast certain spells at the right time without going oom, required quite a bit of skill. I've been watching healer streams and it looks like faceroll... mana is never an issue and overhealing doesn't punish you by any means. Not only that, but you had to have certain raid comps... a certain amount of that class and such... now it really doesn't matter aside from tanks depending on their CD's. IMO, PvE content isn't difficult anymore and it doesn't matter how many charts you post... From first hand experience, I never felt as if it was challenging... Don't both asking for achievements... Quit the game and majority of my hardcore raiding was spent during vanilla/TBC before achievements.

Oh yeah.. I remember when you still had to bother about how to play your class and which item you chose over another... Well today that's a given. For that they improved mechanics in bossfights. But I guess that's not as difficult as chosing rank2 chainheal over 6 to spam it into your raidgroup or to create castsequence macros for your ultimate dps. Ah yes you had to hit only one button anyway as wl for example...

Sorry dude, your difficulty has nothing to do with what's going on in the game atm and about what this all is about here. Bosses back then were dump easy, it was just the preparations that were damn shitty, and sometimes to wait for some fixes I guess. Oh but this might be exactly the point... Back then you could, if you know how to play the game, just jump in and have your fun with the group. Today you cannot afk even if you know what comes since whatever comes will demand you to focus.

[Deleted]

The answer is LFR.

LFR is no substitute for the fun of doing things in an organised group with your friends. I'd imagine most casual players had a lot more fun doing normal modes in an organised guild run than running LFR with 24 randoms.

[Nobleshield]

The answer is LFR.

How many times must it be stated the answer is NOT LFR for close-knit guilds? Seriously, this bullshit was debunked in the other thread, and yet it's still being brought up here! CASUAL, FRIENDS AND FAMILY GUILDS WANT TO RUN AS A TEAM, NOT PART OF SOME BIG ZERG RANDOM PUG. Do you understand that concept at all?

[Osmeric]

The answer is LFR.

Ooo! I love "Jeopardy"!

"Why will people walk away from the expansion after killing the final boss once?"

[lettuce]

Yeah, they've been trying too hard to add too many crazy complex mechanics to every boss. Individually they're all cool but when you stack too many difficult mechanics together it becomes a tad bit overwhelming. Combined with gear checks and it can become guild breaking. This kind of thing is fine, if not perfect for heroic, but normals should not be this face-melting.

[Brodeo]

I've said it before and i'll say it again. The current progression for a first-timer at max level does not prepare them for raiding. As unpopular as it is, feeling lucky to raid instead of feeling entitled to it really makes a difference in the average raiders performance and endurance.

The game might be 'harder' than it ever was, but a lot of what made a good, dedicated raider into such is bypassed for QoL and accessibility. Also, the tiering of difficulties takes a lot away from the whole experience. Many people who are on the fence about actual raiding are sated with lfr kills.

I'll even admit that the fact that LFR is there and the fact that i can see it whenever i want has pretty much fully prevented me from looking to join another raiding guild ever. A few item levels just isnt motivation enough to dedicate anything to this hobby.

Back on topic, the lack of difficulty is really what is hurting the attrition rates at harder tiers. People arent prepared for or accustomed to adversity in this game unless they played it before wrath.

[Akraen]

Don't let yourself get trolled Arothand. I make a lot of posts and effort to get ideas out there, people are always there not understanding it. The ignorant don't know they're ignorant.

There are good replies that counter the data, which is why I replied with my post on the matter-- I don't bother attempting to look at the number of people, but rather the amount of content and development triggers based off popularity (i.e. I don't understand GC's stance on 5 mans, I just don't see it).

Less and less raiders are doing normal difficulty only. This far into 5.2 and you're either a heroic guild or haven't killed Lei Shen. Casual guilds just can't do it. Most of us who are in heroic guilds (myself included) just don't realize the degree of effort we're putting in and how much ilvl scaling really is for guilds that have been starting each tier overgeared versus undergeared and catching up.

There's just no need for 2 modes of raiding outside LFR anymore. But if there must be a Normal mode it really should be easy to clear in one or two nights by just "a group" with something that resembles a comp of 2 tanks, 2-3 healers, 6 dps that all are about 50th percentile quality. Outstanding performance should be what's expected in Heroic only.

---------- Post added 2013-05-30 at 10:24 PM ----------

I've said it before and i'll say it again. The current progression for a first-timer at max level does not prepare them for raiding. As unpopular as it is, feeling lucky to raid instead of feeling entitled to it really makes a difference in the average raiders performance and endurance.

The game might be 'harder' than it ever was, but a lot of what made a good, dedicated raider into such is bypassed for QoL and accessibility. Also, the tiering of difficulties takes a lot away from the whole experience. Many people who are on the fence about actual raiding are sated with lfr kills.

I'll even admit that the fact that LFR is there and the fact that i can see it whenever i want has pretty much fully prevented me from looking to join another raiding guild ever. A few item levels just isnt motivation enough to dedicate anything to this hobby.

Back on topic, the lack of difficulty is really what is hurting the attrition rates at harder tiers. People arent prepared for or accustomed to adversity in this game unless they played it before wrath.

While that may be true, given the timetable of patch content the strain is on completing it in-time, rather than the vanilla/BC model of just complete it. The rushed feeling of getting everything done before the next patch comes as a casual-to-mid-level guild is a lot of strain and many simply don't find it worth it anymore.

[Keoren]

Yes, this was my impression. I won't know if they ever get better, since no one is attempting to pug that boss anymore, as far as I can tell.

There is already a great difference in coordination between a PUG group entering a raid instance and a PUG group that just gathered in order to kill a world boss. If you placed Lord Marrowgar outside of Icecrown Citadel, you'd see people getting slaughtered by being left to die on the spikes or for some other reason such as cleave damage.

The case you're trying to twist into supporting your arguments is also partially a realm problem. Solving the realm population issues alone would boost the quality of raiding.

Yeah, they've been trying too hard to add too many crazy complex mechanics to every boss. Individually they're all cool but when you stack too many difficult mechanics together it becomes a tad bit overwhelming. Combined with gear checks and it can become guild breaking. This kind of thing is fine, if not perfect for heroic, but normals should not be this face-melting.

I'm also thinking that some of the initial encounters on normal are probably quite overwhelming to many groups. The two main adjustments that I would personally make are more paths of progression and a more gradual increase in difficulty in the beginning of a tier.

I don't think that encouraging groups to progress through the tiers in a chronological order is a bad idea either. It prepares the players for the current content in a way that nothing else really does. The rewards for going back simply need to be worth it.

[Osmeric]

The case you're trying to twist into supporting your arguments is also partially a realm problem. Solving the realm population issues alone would boost the quality of raiding.

I wasn't really trying to twist this case. I had only mentioned Oondasta to exclude it as a gear source for the purpose of reaching ilvl 510 or higher. If you wish, I'll concede that my server just sucks here; it doesn't alter the argument I was making against Ghostcrawler's excuse for low guild J'R numbers.

[shokter]

There's just no need for 2 modes of raiding outside LFR anymore. But if there must be a Normal mode it really should be easy to clear in one or two nights by just "a group" with something that resembles a comp of 2 tanks, 2-3 healers, 6 dps that all are about 50th percentile quality. Outstanding performance should be what's expected in Heroic only

No, not everyone wants the content spoonfed to them and not everyone wants stuff to be incredibly hard. The answer is not to rob players of an established difficulty niche, rather they should identify players not served by current niches and create one. From what I see on MMO and in game that would likely be players who used to raid mostly 10n but now find them too difficult. Instead of displacing more players by making normals or heroics harder or easier they should provide a niche for those already displaced.

[Kivimetsan]

Not so casual-craft now huh.
Haters still gonna hate, especially the wrath babies.

Infracted; Post constructively (Sonnillon).

[Hexz]

This model is just pointing out the obvious that we are screaming for the need of a difficulty to bridge into normal mode, the progression from Jin'rokh normal, to Lei Shen and then into heroic mode is actually quite smooth road for anyone that came from 16/16 normal the previous tier, but those those that didn't and anyone new, well its simply just to hard.

Take note i'm not saying this as someone struggling in content , i'm working at the top end of heroic and personally i found the normal mode to be right at the level that i still have to put some decent effort on reclears of normal bosses and for the first time i did them they did present some challenge which was nice, that being said I've played the game since classic and grew as the content providers did, raids are so much more complex then they have ever been and without a difficulty to bridge people it isn't fair for new players in this game.

Also anyone that thinks these people should just step up do more research and all that is silly, not everyone can learn by watching people need to do. Also every single hardcore raider can only gain from a lower difficulty, all it will do is bring more people to raiding and eventually more people to our level, everyone should know how hard it can be to replace people i high end heroic guild.

They added a 3rd level in dungeons, even scenarios came now have a 2nd, its seriously time that raiding gets another difficulty, one that gives players more time to react and learn.

[Zstr]

game didn't go more difficult, that's a palyer who got fucking lazy and don't want to work for it , then they whine, result is lfr where ppl do afk and get shines
boss is not a wall it's a player who beating with his brain at the wall not understanding simple `don't stand in a fire and press right buttons` and sometimes lacking reaction as sometimes I feel like there are half of raid are people with disabilities playing game with me
just simple example stupid durumu maze, this is like piss ur 2 fingers, isn't it so simple to stand at place where is no fog animation?
also raiding is on decline coz game is old,and ppl care about real life which going faster If you do not want to remain u should keep moving not playing game