Mekkatorque boss design

[Soluna]

So far the worst fight in the game. Nothing is worse then banging your head on mythic. Idk who thought it was a good idea to fill a fight with so many mechanics. No one with their right mind wanted fights with this much junk.

No fight should be dependent for every single person in the raid to have a mic ready. Bosses should not be designed around the fact that addons and voice chat exist regardless of difficulty.

Lul Mekkatorque is easy af. If you think that this is a fight that has too many mechanics, I hope you will never reach Jaina, cause she, and any other mythic endboss, have double the mechanics of mekkatorque, and are a lot more punishing :S

And yes, you SHOULD have a mic for every raider if you want to clear mythic. It is the hardest content in the game, and raiding is a co-operation activity, not a solo one. Maybe you'd like blizz to create mythic raider A.I., so that the A.I. can boost you through 9/9M then?

- - - Updated - - -

When I think of artificial difficulty I think awkward controls, camera angles, pure RNG (Hyrja), and more recently - Mekkatorque robots, referring to the heroic/mythic change of only seeing the colours while in the robots. As currently a raid leader who did not speak on voice comms for the longest time because of reasons I now ignore at my own expense, it is a touchy subject and I strongly empathise with people who don't talk for personal reasons. It's very apparent on this boss that not being able to is a detriment beyond what we've seen in the past, yes you have 45 seconds so you can use target macros with weakauras and so on, but it is decidedly inferior and a lot of fiddling around where things can easily go wrong.

We have already killed it multiple times with a smaller group than usual, I had this feeling the instant I saw it and it was confirmed when we tried with a lot of people who couldn't speak because someone came to me saying how they felt so bad that they were holding us back because of it. We also had people speak for the first time because they felt they were forced and were clearly uncomfortable. It put me in a really foul mood because I don't want anyone in my guild to feel like that as a result of a boss mechanic in heroic of all places. I would argue even mythic shouldn't include this, something like 2500 guilds reaching it before the end of the tier isn't an unreasonable estimate, with a lot of them including less than tolerant people so I feel it's adding needless stress to the people who likely already don't need it.

Ultimately the mechanic is a gimmick, it's incredibly simple if you can talk, and it's not as if the rest of the fight has tonnes going on so to me it feels like some attempt at a "unique" mechanic that video game companies seem to love for some reason but instead turned out to be a substitute for real mechanics. I realise the amount of people it actually affects is probably few, I'd just prefer not to see this sort of thing moving forward.

Curious what other people think though.

How can you be a raid leader and not want voice comms? That's the total opposite of being a raid leader... it's like saying that you are a CEO when you are the cleaning lady.

[Illana]

That’s right, the unique mechanic people love on this fight is the one that requires communication. It’s a social game with some anti-social elements littered throughout. Should we stop releasing movies without subtitles in theaters because of deaf people? Probably not, so why should blizzard not implement a mechanic that requires communication because of those with communication issues? Denying the entire raiding community something fun like this just because there’s a few people that don’t want to talk or are too afraid to talk or can’t speak the language of the raid group they’re with is a bit ridiculous.

That's an awful analogy, the film has accommodated for those people with issues but the fight has not done the same.

Fun is subjective and there's many mechanics that do not require almost mandatory voice communication to be fun.

And you seem to underestimate the diversity within the EU servers. We have the entirety of europe plus russia which means over 10 major languages spoken.

[Jastall]

That's an awful analogy, the film has accommodated for those people with issues but the fight has not done the same.

Fun is subjective and there's many mechanics that do not require almost mandatory voice communication to be fun.

And you seem to underestimate the diversity within the EU servers. We have the entirety of europe plus russia which means over 10 major languages spoken.

I've also been to Europe frequently enough to know that most young-ish people (IE those more likely to play games and raid) have at least a basic grasp of English. Saw that in Italy, France, Portugal, Croatia, and Greece. And before you start, I'm French Canadian and still am perfectly fine raiding in English so this ain't just me saying people should adopt my language or anything.

It's really not beyond anyone to say (name) Red or something along those lines. To say nothing of the fact that addons/weakauras exist for the mechanic as well. It's only a cockblock if you stubbornly let it be.

[Illana]

I've also been to Europe frequently enough to know that most young-ish people (IE those more likely to play games and raid) have at least a basic grasp of English. Saw that in Italy, France, Portugal, Croatia, and Greece. And before you start, I'm French Canadian and still am perfectly fine raiding in English so this ain't just me saying people should adopt my language or anything.

It's really not beyond anyone to say (name) Red or something along those lines. To say nothing of the fact that addons/weakauras exist for the mechanic as well. It's only a cockblock if you stubbornly let it be.

The makers of those addons have stressed that they are not reliable and technically in a grey area in terms of legality due to how close they are to automated gameplay.

You don't play in the EU region, you don't know what it's like.

Also the fact you believe that young people play wow shows how disconnected you are from reality, average age of wow players is late 20s now.

I've also killed mekka on heroic twice now in pugs, however both of these runs we had to remove every person who did not join on voice comms and was able to speak clearly in English before they went down.

[Taeldorian]

That's an awful analogy, the film has accommodated for those people with issues but the fight has not done the same.

Fun is subjective and there's many mechanics that do not require almost mandatory voice communication to be fun.

And you seem to underestimate the diversity within the EU servers. We have the entirety of europe plus russia which means over 10 major languages spoken.

Fun is definitely subjective and there’s plenty of people having fun with this mechanic even if you base it on this thread alone. Does that mean we can’t have these mechanics anymore because of the few who can’t speak or don’t want to speak for whatever reason?

Not only that but you can have 2 people speaking in the robot instead of 3. Unless for some reason a majority of your raid can’t communicate it shouldn’t be an issue. If a majority of your raid can’t communicate im honestly impressed you even do mythic like that.

I don’t play in the EU region so I can’t comment on it much but there’s a ton of EU guilds both alliance and horde that are 9/9M or 8/9M or even 7/9M. There’s more EU guilds 7/8M than US. If they can do it then I’m not sure what the problem is.

[Illana]

Fun is definitely subjective and there’s plenty of people having fun with this mechanic even if you base it on this thread alone. Does that mean we can’t have these mechanics anymore because of the few who can’t speak or don’t want to speak for whatever reason?

Not only that but you can have 2 people speaking in the robot instead of 3. Unless for some reason a majority of your raid can’t communicate it shouldn’t be an issue. If a majority of your raid can’t communicate im honestly impressed you even do mythic like that.

Mythic raiding in general is not very hard, you wipe and then you learn mechanics by muscle memory and audio cues mainly. Note that I'm not talking about races for server and world firsts, obviously those require incredible dedication and skill.

There's plenty of guilds that do not make voice communication mandatory and get by with the raid tools available to them like world markers addons etc.

Just because you've had no experience of such styles of raiding does not make raiding with voice communication the "default" or the "preferred" way.

[Taeldorian]

Mythic raiding in general is not very hard, you wipe and then you learn mechanics by muscle memory and audio cues mainly. Note that I'm not talking about races for server and world firsts, obviously those require incredible dedication and skill.

There's plenty of guilds that do not make voice communication mandatory and get by with the raid tools available to them like world markers addons etc.

Just because you've had no experience of such styles of raiding does not make raiding with voice communication the "default" or the "preferred" way.

I didn’t say it was the default way but if you’re going 9/9M then it most certainly is. You’d be hard pressed to find a guild that’s 9/9M without any communication. They might have 2-3 or 4-5 players that can’t speak for whatever reason but certainly not the entire raid.

Also just gonna repeat this since I edited it in before and you might’ve missed it: I don’t play in the EU region so I can’t comment on it much but there’s a ton of EU guilds both alliance and horde that are 9/9M or 8/9M or even 7/9M. There’s more EU guilds at 7/9 than there are US guilds. If they can do it then I’m not sure what the problem is. To add onto this your main point seems to be about language barriers and how we don’t understand your troubles but there’s plenty of guilds (moreso than US) that have killed the boss. It doesn’t seem like much of an issue.

I’d rather something like this not get removed from the game just to appease people who can’t or won’t communicate with each other when raiding. It’s a social game with a few anti social elements, if you don’t wanna raid socially then that’s your choice but that shouldn’t dictate how fights work. Not trying to be a dick or tell you how to play, I just don’t believe this specific issue should dictate what happens with boss design.

Alternatively just as a recommendation. You can use the WA that marks people as X or Skull and have everyone that can’t twlk in your raid make macros for each mark along with each color. So for example they can press the macro thatll shout “X Blue” and “Skull Yellow” to help get through it. Yes it’ll be more work but raiding w/o comms is already more work.

[Illana]

I didn’t say it was the default way but if you’re going 9/9M then it most certainly is. You’d be hard pressed to find a guild that’s 9/9M without any communication. They might have 2-3 or 4-5 players that can’t speak for whatever reason but certainly not the entire raid.

Also just gonna repeat this since I edited it in before and you might’ve missed it: I don’t play in the EU region so I can’t comment on it much but there’s a ton of EU guilds both alliance and horde that are 9/9M or 8/9M or even 7/9M. There’s more EU guilds at 7/9 than there are US guilds. If they can do it then I’m not sure what the problem is. To add onto this your main point seems to be about language barriers and how we don’t understand your troubles but there’s plenty of guilds (moreso than US) that have killed the boss. It doesn’t seem like much of an issue.

I’d rather something like this not get removed from the game just to appease people who can’t or won’t communicate with each other when raiding. It’s a social game with a few anti social elements, if you don’t wanna raid socially then that’s your choice but that shouldn’t dictate how fights work.

You're talking about the top 1% of raiders, of course they will make sure language barriers are not an issue when selecting their roster.

I'm talking about pugs through group finder, where you do not have the time to give an individual interview to everyone you invite.

Question for you: do you think LFR is a good thing?

[Taeldorian]

You're talking about the top 1% of raiders, of course they will make sure language barriers are not an issue when selecting their roster.

I'm talking about pugs through group finder, where you do not have the time to give an individual interview to everyone you invite.

Question for you: do you think LFR is a good thing?

I don’t mind LFR but I also don’t participate in it so I don’t think I’m the right person to ask. Short answer: I don’t have a problem with it.

If you’re talking about pugs through group finder I definitely wouldn’t expect you to be going for cutting edge. I haven’t pugged for a while now but I’m not really sure pugs are capable of that. Usually there’s 1 or 2 bosses every tier that are widely regarded as “pug killers” so it doesn’t surprise me that we have 2 or so this tier.

Ive been 9/9m for a while now so I’m not really sure I’m seeing things correctly from your perspective but personally I don’t think this one problem should dictate raid design or boss design.

Also reposting again since I edited it in before you saw it: Alternatively just as a recommendation. You can use the WA that marks people as X or Skull and have everyone that can’t talk in your raid make macros for each mark along with each color. So for example they can press the macro thatll shout “X Blue” and “Skull Yellow” to help get through it. Yes it’ll be more work but raiding w/o comms is already more work. My buddies guild has quite a few people that can’t speak for personal reasons so they did this and it worked well for them. Pugs won’t do this most likely but if your raiding in a guild that’s having this issue it’ll work. The WA is reliable as well.

[Illana]

I don’t mind LFR but I also don’t participate in it so I don’t think I’m the right person to ask. Short answer: I don’t have a problem with it.

If you’re talking about pugs through group finder I definitely wouldn’t expect you to be going for cutting edge. I haven’t pugged for a while now but I’m not really sure pugs are capable of that. Usually there’s 1 or 2 bosses every tier that are widely regarded as “pug killers” so it doesn’t surprise me that we have 2 or so this tier.

Ive been 9/9m for a while now so I’m not really sure I’m seeing things correctly from your perspective but personally I don’t think this one problem should dictate raid design or boss design.

Also reposting again since I edited it in before you saw it: Alternatively just as a recommendation. You can use the WA that marks people as X or Skull and have everyone that can’t talk in your raid make macros for each mark along with each color. So for example they can press the macro thatll shout “X Blue” and “Skull Yellow” to help get through it. Yes it’ll be more work but raiding w/o comms is already more work. My buddies guild has quite a few people that can’t speak for personal reasons so they did this and it worked well for them. Pugs won’t do this most likely but if your raiding in a guild that’s having this issue it’ll work. The WA is reliable as well.

I'm talking heroic pugs, the bot mechanic is the same in heroic as it is in mythic. In normal and LFR it's much easier as everyone can see the bot combos.

It's not a pug killer per se, it's a "must use voice or your raid is over" fight. The actual mechanics of the fight are relatively simple otherwise.

Your suggestions about macros, you expect every person in a pug to make 12 new macros, put them on their bars AND use them correctly? Definitely feasible but realistic? No. Generally pugs for mekka just invite only those who can speak on voice and we get on with that, but that's obviously excluding a non-trivial part of the population.

My point about LFR is that if you were for it, it meant you are being a hypocrite since it's the very definition of "accessibility" whereas you're ok with arbitrarily locking people out of content.

[Fuiking]

If you don't WANT to talk, that's fine. But you can use your smartphone as a microphone for your computer, so everybody has a microphone on their desk nowadays.

I have no smartphone, just because of that reason.. and people calling me and expecting me to pick said phone up.

[Taeldorian]

I'm talking heroic pugs, the bot mechanic is the same in heroic as it is in mythic. In normal and LFR it's much easier as everyone can see the bot combos.

It's not a pug killer per se, it's a "must use voice or your raid is over" fight. The actual mechanics of the fight are relatively simple otherwise.

Your suggestions about macros, you expect every person in a pug to make 12 new macros, put them on their bars AND use them correctly? Definitely feasible but realistic? No. Generally pugs for mekka just invite only those who can speak on voice and we get on with that, but that's obviously excluding a non-trivial part of the population.

My point about LFR is that if you were for it, it meant you are being a hypocrite since it's the very definition of "accessibility" whereas you're ok with arbitrarily locking people out of content.

I’m not necessarily for it, there’s just nothing we can do about it at this point so I don’t have an issue with it. We’re past the point of arguing for its removal, too many people use it (according to Blizz) to remove it now. That’s why my short answer was I don’t have a problem with it.

However, I never said I had a problem with accessibility. Mekkatorque doesn’t stop you from accessing the raid and this mechanic -doesn’t- stop you from killing him either. In heroic you have much more time in the robots than you do in mythic so it isn’t the same. You actually have more than enough time to type out the other two peoples colors while they type out yours if you don’t wanna set macros. I thought you were talking about mythic where that wouldn’t be possible. It’s a bit ridiculous to say I’m against accessibility when I don’t believe this 1 mechanic should be removed just because a few people don’t want to or can’t communicate, that’s a pretty big leap especially considering this mechanic doesn’t prevent you from accessing the raid or killing the boss, plenty have done it even with speaking issues on heroic.

[Illana]

I’m not necessarily for it, there’s just nothing we can do about it at this point so I don’t have an issue with it. We’re past the point of arguing for its removal, too many people use it (according to Blizz) to remove it now. That’s why my short answer was I don’t have a problem with it.

However, I never said I had a problem with accessibility. Mekkatorque doesn’t stop you from accessing the raid and this mechanic -doesn’t- stop you from killing him either. In heroic you have much more time in the robots than you do in mythic so it isn’t the same. You actually have more than enough time to type out the other two peoples colors while they type out yours if you don’t wanna set macros. I thought you were talking about mythic where that wouldn’t be possible. It’s a bit ridiculous to say I’m against accessibility when I don’t believe this 1 mechanic should be removed just because a few people don’t want to or can’t communicate, that’s a pretty big leap especially considering this mechanic doesn’t prevent you from accessing the raid or killing the boss, plenty have done it even with speaking issues on heroic.

I'd like to see you type and dodge the fire tornadoes at the same time

Also would like to see the metrics on how many people have done the boss with speaking issues, I know I'll never get them because they don't exist. All I know is that I've wiped at least a dozen times on this boss due to people not speaking and dying after being kicked out of a bot or bots just not dealt with and magically as soon as we get a raid together who ALL speak the same language and are willing to speak, the boss goes down as if it's a sack of potatoes

[Taeldorian]

I'd like to see you type and dodge the fire tornadoes at the same time

Also would like to see the metrics on how many people have done the boss with speaking issues, I know I'll never get them because they don't exist. All I know is that I've wiped at least a dozen times on this boss due to people not speaking and dying after being kicked out of a bot or bots just not dealt with and magically as soon as we get a raid together who ALL speak the same language and are willing to speak, the boss goes down as if it's a sack of potatoes

You don’t need to type and dodge firelines if you’re in the robot you do understand that right? The 3 people in the robot don’t need to dodge or do anything outside of coordinate the colors. In heroic, you can type it out very easily as you have plenty of time. “Tammy red, Ryan Blue” and then they type yours. I raided with a buddies guild who has a few anti-social people that don’t wanna speak and they did the macro thing which worked very well for them but that was for mythic, in heroic you can just type it out.

Of course the boss is easier with comms. Raiding in general is easier with comms. That doesn’t mean mekka is unkillable without comms though nor does this mechanic make him inaccessible especially on heroic and below.

[Illana]

Ah you're right, I was thinking back to a normal run where the raid leader was typing to people in bots.

I have seen the typing in action before, it didn't go very well though I can definitely see it being possible.

[Jastall]

The makers of those addons have stressed that they are not reliable and technically in a grey area in terms of legality due to how close they are to automated gameplay.

You don't play in the EU region, you don't know what it's like.

Also the fact you believe that young people play wow shows how disconnected you are from reality, average age of wow players is late 20s now.

I've also killed mekka on heroic twice now in pugs, however both of these runs we had to remove every person who did not join on voice comms and was able to speak clearly in English before they went down.

Late 20s is still young-ish by any sane account, and I don't need to play in the EU servers to know it's hardly a mess of people who barely understand each other all the time. Players naturally gravitate towards servers that fit their language, especially if they raid; I know exactly what the French Canadian-friendly servers are in NA and the Latin American ones are infamous enough over here as well.

Still, EU guilds are obviously not having any issues downing bosses in the raid on Mythic, so I'll definitely maintain that this is only a problem if you let it be. One boss in one difficulty out of four requiring voice comms in a multiplayer game is hardly an unreasonable demand at all.

Out of Mythic the mechanic is very forgiving. You can even type your calls if need be, it's 45 seconds if memory serves. No voice comms required on Heroic and below.

[Simca]

The only real complaint I have with Mekkatorgue is that the camera position and max distance changes so that you can barely see the fight or dodge the fire lines when you're small. That part IS artificial difficulty. I really hate when Blizzard screws with the camera as part of the fight, especially after they restricted its max distance.

My other complaint isn't really with the boss fight but with humanity. I'm colorblind (severe protanomaly, not quite propanopia but extremely close), and groups get really fussy when I only call out shapes and not the colors. I call out the colors for the three that I can, but for the other two I just revert to shapes. I try to remember their colors, but in the heat of the moment I often just revert to calling out the shapes because it is faster for me. The amount of complaints that other people have about this is so baffling it makes me wonder if the rest of the world is shape-blind. Or maybe they just all failed Geometry.

If somebody calls out my color and not the shape, I don't have a problem. I can just read the tooltips for the buttons, since it says the color and shape on the buttons (though the "Orange Wrench" button is probably mislabeled, maybe Blizzard is colorblind too).

[Sageless]

My main complaint about having to talk during the robots, is that I don't like to talk during active encounters as I'd like to use speakers for sound.
Using this during an active encounter is problematic, especially if someone else talks as well.

This means I need to use a headphone, which I don't find comfortable especially for prolonged times. For heroic this wasn't a big issue as we cleared that rather quickly and moved to Mythic progression. 'Luckily' I took a raiding break before progress on Mekka began. Being completely honest, part of the reason I took a break was the idea of having to do Mekka progress while being annoyed because I had to wear headphones for 3+ hours straight.

While I like the idea that calling things out on voice increases your chances to beat encounters, reduce the time to explain tactics or adjust things on the fly by calling things out during encounters I do not like the idea of making it mandatory to do the encounter.
If they want to implement it again, I hope they limit it to the end boss on Mythic difficulty so 99% of the raiders (and more importantly me ) never need to worry about it.

[Ebonhawke]

People always find something to complain about... it's the internets.

[Simmias]

I have no smartphone, just because of that reason.. and people calling me and expecting me to pick said phone up.

so you intentionally gimp yourself because... you're an idiot?
ok, I can see why raiding is hard for you.