Having read Limit’s blog, and having checked the cool MMO-C post that counts the days bosses have survived, are we now in the position where Mythic needs to be dramatically reviewed… Or totally removed?
To be clear:
@Nitros14 isn’t showing a post that suggests earlier bosses were easier; that’s not his point, so don’t argue about raid difficulty. It’s widely understood that Mythic bosses are now the most difficult bosses for raids to kill, and that earlier ones were much easier. It’s also widely understood that top level raids now have much better skilled and committed players than those fifteen years ago, while the challenge itself was vastly different.
Roughly summarised, the current raid system is about individual performance – back then, it was about group organisation.
But the question here is whether or not a raid difficulty, that practically no players will participate in, is actually managing to deliver what the designers are intending.
Perhaps the first question is what the designers want their raid difficulties to achieve.
Now, let’s not forget; we’re in an expansion that’s failing across the board for multiple reasons, not just raiding. But when the raid design is seeing nothing but the final boss surviving more than a day, in its most difficult setting, are we witnessing a design or are we witnessing a design failure?
I’m not a hugely experienced raider, so I’m happy to be corrected, but the last example I recall of this was Cataclysm’s Ragnaros. The other bosses were challenging enough, but the jump to killing Ragnaros was huge. That’s what’s just happened with Jaina, and both of the first two killing leaders have said that it’s frustrated them.
But should Blizzard be trying to create content that is aimed at such an extremely small percentage of its players? In a content system that is participated by a minority, should a role-playing game be trying to up difficulties to an exclusive group that contribute nothing whatsoever to the game?
Given that Mythic is essentially unnecessary for the game’s community, is there a strong reason to even see it continue, given that it’s not even pleasing the minority it’s aimed at?
I’ve said before that raiding should see only two settings – LFR, and a flexible group setting that starts ‘Normal’, has its second half as ‘Heroic’, and then has a couple of activated ‘Mythic’ bosses as it worked in Ulduar. Such a stance would dramatically improve so many problems, particularly the ludicrous item level scaling, and we’re now in a position where the most committed raid players can only have two outcomes:
1. They master the game to the point where everything becomes too easy.
2. Difficulty is upped to where an even smaller percentage ever participates.
So… What should be aimed at?
I’m genuinely curious what people think, with the exception of the Mythic raiders who will argue that they should be catered for, despite being a huge minority. I’m not suggesting that such a view is wrong, I’m simply saying that I already know it exists.
Answers on a postcard.