Flex Lockout - how does it work?

[Theronus]

World renowned cyclist wins, world renowned cyclist wins by cheating. Both are the same right? All the people he beat while cheating should not feel that their sport was cheapened right?

That's a terrible analogy.
I don't think you know what 'cheating' means.

[judgementofantonidas]

That's a terrible analogy.
I don't think you know what 'cheating' means.

achievements are to be earned or they become completely useless. if guild A progresses through six months of content to eventually complete their goal on their own by their own effort, why should guild B be given a tool to complete in week one simply by purchasing it?

they shouldn't. it cheapens the whole game.

to correct my analogy.

cyclist wins race (raiders doing their own work). cyclist is pulled up hills during race by holding on to the bumper of a car (players being carried)..........

[Theronus]

achievements are to be earned or they become completely useless. if guild A progresses through six months of content to eventually complete their goal on their own by their own effort, why should guild B be given a tool to complete in week one simply by purchasing it?

they shouldn't. it cheapens the whole game.

to correct my analogy.

cyclist wins race (raiders doing their own work). cyclist is pulled up hills during race by holding on to the bumper of a car (players being carried)..........

Still wrong, the correct analogy would be:

Cyclist #1 wins the race.

Amateur Cyclist #2 wins a different competition, with less skilled cyclists.

See? Why should Cyclist #1 care about #2 ?

[judgementofantonidas]

Still wrong, the correct analogy would be:

Cyclist #1 wins the race.

Amateur Cyclist #2 wins a different competition, with less skilled cyclists.

See? Why should Cyclist #1 care about #2 ?

not even close. since with Flex you can pay a skilled cyclist from another server to come carry you.
but you will continue to play dumb so more power to you.

[Count Zero]

World renowned cyclist wins, world renowned cyclist wins by cheating. Both are the same right? All the people he beat while cheating should not feel that their sport was cheapened right?

Well for this analogy to work, everyone knows the person cheated. My point still stands -- the person who didn't cheat knows the hard work that was put into it, and the person who cheated might have a trophy but did not put in the work. I measure things by internal fulfillment. I see you have a different standard, and I'll leave it at that since I don't want to keep de-railing the thread.

[Criptos]

not even close. since with Flex you can pay a skilled cyclist from another server to come carry you.
but you will continue to play dumb so more power to you.

I think the major thing trying to be expressed is that You know what you accomplished and you should feel good for it. What others do shouldn't matter to you.

What you're saying (if this analogy is horrible forgive me it's 1:21 AM and I'm typing on the fly) Would be like Sir Edmund Hiliary (first man to climb Everest) Getting pissed off at people that hired expedition guides to get them up the mountain with tons of prep work, safety lines, modern equipment, and Sherpas. He know what he accomplished, what others do after him should not and does not matter. You're getting worked up over something that is all in your head. If you play this game just to be better than others, then maybe you need to rethink about what motivates you to play a GAME (hint: it should be about fun [progressing with your guild at your own pace irregardless of what others are doing])

[l33t]

I somehow feel they should've implement flex tech into already existing raid difficulties, not add one more difficulty instead.

[Normie]

I read your posts and what I see is someone fighting an entity that exists largely in your own head.

Precisely.

What is this huge conspiracy anyway?

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I somehow feel they should've implement flex tech into already existing raid difficulties, not add one more difficulty instead.

The problem with that is that Normal is too difficult for anyone except Heroic raiders.

[Roshar]

I somehow feel they should've implement flex tech into already existing raid difficulties, not add one more difficulty instead.

Imo this will happen in the next expansion. 10 and 25 will be removed and it'll just be flex for both normal and heroic.

[Deja Thoris]

Imo this will happen in the next expansion. 10 and 25 will be removed and it'll just be flex for both normal and heroic.

This will never happen because its next to impossible to balance raid difficulty perfectly depending on the number of players. This will mean people chasing world firsts will game the system as far as possible by bringing "x" number to an encounter to make it as easy as possible.

For example, if the threshold for spawning an extra lightning bolt is 14 players then a guild could bring 13. If a fight is a tight dps check and the health of mobs doesn't scale perfectly then they will choose to bring the number that gives them the best possible ratio and so on.

Flex works for loosely tuned stuff but I don't see it working for tightly tuned heroics without an absolutely insane amount of balancing and quality control.

[Deleted]

This will never happen because its next to impossible to balance raid difficulty perfectly depending on the number of players. This will mean people chasing world firsts will game the system as far as possible by bringing "x" number to an encounter to make it as easy as possible.

For example, if the threshold for spawning an extra lightning bolt is 14 players then a guild could bring 13. If a fight is a tight dps check and the health of mobs doesn't scale perfectly then they will choose to bring the number that gives them the best possible ratio and so on.

Flex works for loosely tuned stuff but I don't see it working for tightly tuned heroics without an absolutely insane amount of balancing and quality control.

Agree with this.

I can see normal mode getting canned, or heroic mode getting canned and normal mode being the same as heroic is now in difficulty.

Something else I can see is scaling of an instance from 3-25 people. (With loot etc changing as numbers go up.)

[Kalmah]

Imo this will happen in the next expansion. 10 and 25 will be removed and it'll just be flex for both normal and heroic.

There's two problems with applying flex to those raid modes:
- Balancing is hard. There will be an ideal raid size for each boss.
- Loot distribution. Either it switches to personal loot, or there will be raid size breakpoints for maximal loot.

Personal loot is appropriate for pugs, but I think it sucks for organized raiding. Currently, when you bring in an undergeared recruit, you can feed him all the loot no one wants and have him catch up very fast. With personal loot, this isn't possible.

[Deleted]

There's two problems with applying flex to those raid modes:
- Balancing is hard. There will be an ideal raid size for each boss.
- Loot distribution. Either it switches to personal loot, or there will be raid size breakpoints for maximal loot.

Personal loot is appropriate for pugs, but I think it sucks for organized raiding. Currently, when you bring in an undergeared recruit, you can feed him all the loot no one wants and have him catch up very fast. With personal loot, this isn't possible.

Thing is, blizzard might like that. It slows you down, which means more sub money.

[MoanaLisa]

I honestly think that it will take a big hit. Ask yourself to answer this honestly. With the overwhelming number of players who would rather never progress past LFR why would adding the ability to be carried by players with known performance from other guilds let alone other servers and reap the reward of better gear be any incentive for those same players to ever step up their game and attempt a normal raid? I envision middle of the line guilds taking large hits as the guilds that would already purchase kills from better players late expansion need not wait. Now high end guilds can turn selling carries into even more of a business as they will not need to run Flex but can certainly free up 8 players on an off night and sell a full clear to those unscrupulous players who can sleep at night claiming their full clear as progress after they bought said kill.

Few and far between are the players that take pride in doing it right and doing it themselves. It will just be too much temptation.

The simpler answer is guilds raiding Normal that always seem to have more than ten showing up on raid nights will likely move to Flex or suffer the consequences of benched players leaving for guilds that raid Flex. They can play and not suffer being benched due to no available slot in a 10-man raid. For many of those guilds, Normal will become the out night of the week if they do it at all. Hence normal progression will slow. These are not the sort of guilds that blow through Normal and move on to Heroic in the first week or month that a tier is out. It's the sort of guild that might be not quite yet done with Normal for the current tier and might be 2 or 3/13 in Heroics. There's more of them than people realize. I think they'll enjoy flex, start recruiting with some success on connected realms--an important piece of this--and run with a regular core group, battletag friends from other realms--another important thing, cross-realm raiding in current tier--and some outliers that can show up when they can.

I am pleased to see my prediction that the more successful that Flex becomes the more likely it will suffer the forum fate of LFR is already starting though. It was a pretty safe prediction admittedly.

As to the other argument: one level of 'disorganized difficulty' leading to three levels of 'organized difficulty' seem about right. Especially with normal difficult being where it is now. There's a place for 10-man Wrath difficulty and if they can hit it, it will do fine. I don't see Flex replacing anything but of course, what do I know?

[cabyio]

I think the major thing trying to be expressed is that You know what you accomplished and you should feel good for it. What others do shouldn't matter to you.

Bullshit. Part of what make a particular accomplishment impressive is a comparison to others. "I tied my own shoe!", whoopty fucking do, pretty much everyone does that every day. "I ran a super marathon (one of those 100+ ones)", now that is impressive, the pool of people that can say the same thing is fairly small. Its all about comparison to others. Life is driven by competition. The concept of a non-competitive game is relativly new, and bullshit in my opinion. Just look at the history of sports, pretty much pure competition.

Its all more of the bullshit ideology of "Everyone wins".

[huth]

not even close. since with Flex you can pay a skilled cyclist from another server to come carry you.
but you will continue to play dumb so more power to you.

Then your analogy still doesn't fit, though. For one, raiding is a team activity, cycling isn't. Getting "carried" by a more skilled player just means that you're gonna run into a brick wall when he leaves.
Also, Flex is a different competition from normal and heroic.

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Bullshit. Part of what make a particular accomplishment impressive is a comparison to others. "I tied my own shoe!", whoopty fucking do, pretty much everyone does that every day. "I ran a super marathon (one of those 100+ ones)", now that is impressive, the pool of people that can say the same thing is fairly small. Its all about comparison to others. Life is driven by competition. The concept of a non-competitive game is relativly new, and bullshit in my opinion. Just look at the history of sports, pretty much pure competition.

Its all more of the bullshit ideology of "Everyone wins".

Tying your shoe is a tremendous accomplishment for some disabled people. What makes an accomplishment impressive isn't what you're doing compared to others, but what you're doing compared to your own abilities. A small wiry guy lifting 200 pounds is impressive, superman doing the same is boring.
To much competition can easily ruin your life.

[Kalcheus]

You have to "queue" for Flex with a pre-formed raid in the Instances menu, and you get zoned into a fresh run. From that point it's like LFR. If you killed those bosses already you can't get loot again, and you have to clear through all the earlier bosses to get to the end just like a fresh LFR run of a "wing" of 3-4 bosses.

Ignoring the ridiculous digression this thread took, I want to question this comment.

My understanding is that if everybody in the group has already killed, say, the first boss, then a requeue that lockout for the first wing of Flex will allow the group to skip the first boss. However, if even one person in the group hasn't killed Immerseus, everyone has to kill Immerseus again.

Or has this changed over the course of PTR?

[Croz730]

Ignoring the ridiculous digression this thread took, I want to question this comment.

My understanding is that if everybody in the group has already killed, say, the first boss, then a requeue that lockout for the first wing of Flex will allow the group to skip the first boss. However, if even one person in the group hasn't killed Immerseus, everyone has to kill Immerseus again.

Or has this changed over the course of PTR?

I believe that is correct, when you first queue it will put you on the boss nearest the start of the wing that at least 1 person in your group still needs to kill. However, if you would want to get around that i think you could just remove that 1 person until after you queue then invite them to join once your group is already in and past the first boss.

Side note, for the 10/25 going Flex part of this thread, i think it is possible NORMALS will go the way of Flex, no way Heroics EVER will, impossible to balance correctly. However, i would say that they should continue personal loot into normal with ONE exception to the rule... you should be able to trade loot. That way you keep the randomness that everyone in the group could receive loot at once (or none) but you are still able to trade loot within your group if you get something you can not use but someone else can. That way there is no scaling the # of drops in normals by the number of people (would always be an ideal number to take to maximize loot per person) but you wouldn't get rid of being able to help out the rest of your raid gear up.

[Nobleshield]

Agree with this.

I can see normal mode getting canned, or heroic mode getting canned and normal mode being the same as heroic is now in difficulty.

Something else I can see is scaling of an instance from 3-25 people. (With loot etc changing as numbers go up.)

LFR = Same
Normal = Flex
Heroic = Normal+ (Normal health/damage but the extra stuff from Heroic)

Win-win, mostly.

Re: Flex had something happen last night that seemed weird. We had someone who had to leave the raid group, and when we invited them back they had no way of getting back into the instance. There was no "Teleport to Instance" option, they couldn't queue for Flex because they weren't the leader, and they couldn't walk into the instance portal because we had someone there from another realm. So it seems like you can drop people but can't add people? Anyone know what's up with that?

[Voxxel]

My question is, there are many advertises for Flex pugs "3rd boss", "4th boss", if I join and kill 3rd or fourth boss in Flex, am I still be able to kill the first two on the same week?