4 boss difficulties - the name of accessibility ruins all motivation to do it

[KaPe]

Honeymoon period is long over.

Honeymoon period is "couple months", which is roughly the time it takes for most people to level. Even a single month is relevant, since it requires subscription after actually seeing what Classic is all about, instead of relying purely on hearsay.

[Estravolt]

Honeymoon period is long over.

Sure. Majority of the population isn't even level capped yet.

[LorDC]

Classic dont have difficulty levels, no lfr, no lfg and it is far far more popular and fun game than retail.

Care to give us some hard facts that support your claims?

[Elias01]

Sure. Majority of the population isn't even level capped yet.

Honeymoon period have nothing to do with what level you are.

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Honeymoon period is "couple months", which is roughly the time it takes for most people to level. Even a single month is relevant, since it requires subscription after actually seeing what Classic is all about, instead of relying purely on hearsay.

No it isnt.

[horbindr]

classic doesn't have difficulty levels no.... but you sure see a lot of people asking for them, lot's of people want it to be harder.

[In Ogres We Trust]

And then the raid department gets their budget cut because their costs outweigh the participation and you end up with raids that are copy/pastes of existing areas and/or entire raids simply scrapped. Like in Wrath and Cata.

And? Stop treating raids as if they SHOULD be the end game.

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Fuck attunements. They are bad for the game. There’s a reason Blizzard abandoned it more than a decade ago and it is never, ever coming back to retail. Stop trying to make it happen. Please.

Attunements were fine (this is supposed to be an MMORPG).

[Elias01]

classic doesn't have difficulty levels no.... but you sure see a lot of people asking for them, lot's of people want it to be harder.

Ofc. Becouse challenge is aspect what makes process of experiencing content much more fan. Classic raids lacks challenge becouse it is 15y old. And by harder they means harder on that 1 difficulty level no add some mythic mc. They want baseline to be harder.

[In Ogres We Trust]

Who in his/her right mind even first clears LFR, then N, then HC, and only then M? People normally pick a difficulty they're comfortable w/ and after clearing that they might try a harder one. I don't really know any HC raiders who do LFR or N, if they do, it's to get tmogs they want or carry their buddies through N. So your avg raider usually clears only 1-2 difficulties. It's not that different from what used to happen back in the day.

Also, screw attunements that require clearing prev raid tiers to gain access to later tiers. That's one of the most antisocial and toxic features in the game that didn't last even one whole xpack because it's messing up the raiding community so badly that even Blizz acknowledged that it's just not good.

Oh, you finally got all raiders attuned for BT? It'd be a shame if guilds that were already progressing through BT poached few of your key members and you had to recruit and re-attune new people and do EVERY. SINGLE. OLD. RAID. AGAIN. and pray that your guild wouldn't get poached AGAIN >_> Or ofc you could also start poaching lower tier guilds to speed up the process I've seen soooo many guilds burn out and disband back in TBC because they're stuck doing the same raids because of all the poaching that's happening, it's heart-breaking and discouraging. Luckily, by the end of TBC Blizz stepped in and removed attunements entirely.

People exaggerate this nonsense. If you were doing BT, for example, you have the lower raids on farm, so it was relatively easy to a) gear alternate/recruits and b) to get the attunements (the only PITA attunement revolved around the Vials for access to BT, but that was removed in Patch... I don't remember).

[Lolites]

classic doesn't have difficulty levels no.... but you sure see a lot of people asking for them, lot's of people want it to be harder.

bcs people went to classic looking for challenge just to find there is NONE
i loved it when shortly before classci people say how it will take months for the world first ragnaros, and then it took week (leveling included), that was rly funny to see the buble burst

[Elias01]

Care to give us some hard facts that support your claims?

Classic is trening up everywhere as retail seems nothing but negattivity. Thats is self is enough to say classic is more popular. And there is 0 evidence thats it isnt. Also last i saw wowhead addon what count players classic had over 4m+ players in US and EU.

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bcs people went to classic looking for challenge just to find there is NONE
i loved it when shortly before classci people say how it will take months for the world first ragnaros, and then it took week (leveling included), that was rly funny to see the buble burst

No threy didnt went to classic for challenge.

[horbindr]

Ofc. Becouse challenge is aspect what makes process of experiencing content much more fan. Classic raids lacks challenge becouse it is 15y old. And by harder they means harder on that 1 difficulty level no add some mythic mc. They want baseline to be harder.

yes but if blizzard changes the baseline, a lot of people will get mad too. so if they ever decide to change the balance, that's really the only way they can do it (even if it's done on a server by server basis).

[Lolites]

Classic is trening up everywhere as retail seems nothing but negattivity. Thats is self is enough to say classic is more popular. And there is 0 evidence thats it isnt. Also last i saw wowhead addon what count players classic had over 4m+ players in US and EU.

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No threy didnt went to classic for challenge.

classic is everywhere bcs its new, as soon as next patch hit retail it will be all about retail and barely any classic stuff, you can count on that
also, pay a bit attention next time you are on wowhead, 4 milions CHARACTERS!! its nowhere near 4 milion players, not to mention most of them are probably not even active anymore... (btw if we were generous and say there actualy is 3.5m players, thats roughly the amount that preordered BFA soo at best they had simmillar start)

ppl didnt went to classic for challenge? well i refer you to like 90+% of forums where people kept on how they cant wait for classic bcs it will be challenge and retail is faceroll (but i guess theres the same reading-comprehension problem as with player count), surely not all players, but a lot of them were in fact looking for challenge

[In Ogres We Trust]

Once again, Blizz tried to ignore and downplay players' complaints at the beginning of Cata, that's what the first quote was about. Didn't work out, people started quitting. So the players base was bitching AND quitting the game.

And, sure, LFR's introduction could be too much, but I don't really have that many thoughts on this topic since I'm not its target audience, I think the last time I did LFR was in WoD when everyone had to do LFR to get more tomes for the legendary ring, but as soon as I got those, I forgot about its existence.

The WotLK surge was quitting. People have to get over this nonsense of attempting to attract all sorts of players (if you make a game for non MMORPG players and MMORPG players then it'll suck for both).

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10/25 normal/hc best format in my humble opinion, you don't even need lfr with 10/25, hell they can throw a 20mythic only for the ones that want to fight for world first and make it super and never nerf it

10-20 flex w/20 being a cap for the most difficult content.

[Gref]

Except that design is totally unworkable, and would result in raids being deleted from the game.

ok then let it stay on nax level. find a reasonable place. Not everybody has to clear everything %100. just because you pay doesnt entitle you to all the content. you must put effort and time and get better.

[NineSpine]

Difficulty levels are bad game design, no matter the context. I think the following would be the best path forward:

One difficulty level, but design the content so that it scales in difficulty throughout the raid tier. Some encounters will be very easy and puggable, some will be tougher, and 1-2 per tier will be mythic level difficulty.

While Blizzard has stated that players do not rise to the occasion, I think that you can change that a little bit by getting players into the raids with encounters they can complete, so that they are already there and can try the harder content right in front of them.

[Lolites]

Difficulty levels are bad game design, no matter the context. I think the following would be the best path forward:

One difficulty level, but design the content so that it scales in difficulty throughout the raid tier. Some encounters will be very easy and puggable, some will be tougher, and 1-2 per tier will be mythic level difficulty.

While Blizzard has stated that players do not rise to the occasion, I think that you can change that a little bit by getting players into the raids with encounters they can complete, so that they are already there and can try the harder content right in front of them.

well tbh, people would probably just do those easy bosses and leave, and people who want to do only the hardest content would most likely see just as delay on their way

[Drusin]

well i refer you to like 90+% of forums where people kept on how they cant wait for classic bcs it will be challenge and retail is faceroll (but i guess theres the same reading-comprehension problem as with player count), surely not all players, but a lot of them were in fact looking for challenge

The only challenge is finding time to level while also being a working parent lol

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I think that you can change that a little bit by getting players into the raids with encounters they can complete, so that they are already there and can try the harder content right in front of them.

Like a Naxx designed raid with different difficulty per area? That won't work, people will pop smoke if you try and go to the hard wing. Or they'll go and wipe a couple times then pop smoke. Once they know it's the hard area some players will want no part of it.

[NineSpine]

The only challenge is finding time to level while also being a working parent lol

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Like a Naxx designed raid with different difficulty per area? That won't work, people will pop smoke if you try and go to the hard wing. Or they'll go and wipe a couple times then pop smoke. Once they know it's the hard area some players will want no part of it.

I think that this weird myth that players have some kind of seizure when confronted with difficult content really needs to go away.

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well tbh, people would probably just do those easy bosses and leave, and people who want to do only the hardest content would most likely see just as delay on their way

Blizzard has indicated that the Ulduar style difficulty triggers was too intensive to do, but I could see them making the very easy bosses have triggers like that for people who want to bring them up to the next level.

[Lolites]

I think that this weird myth that players have some kind of seizure when confronted with difficult content really needs to go away.

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Blizzard has indicated that the Ulduar style difficulty triggers was too intensive to do, but I could see them making the very easy bosses have triggers like that for people who want to bring them up to the next level.

now, would it trully be so different from todays raid concept where you choose difficulty an based on that enemies have more hp and dmg and some different abilities? bcs thats basicaly what hardmodes were in ulduar, you just had to trigger them instead of choosing the difficulty before the boss

i got the concept as whole, and its not bad idea, but it seems just too much work for a very minor change that most ppl wouldnt really care about

[NineSpine]

now, would it trully be so different from todays raid concept where you choose difficulty an based on that enemies have more hp and dmg and some different abilities? bcs thats basicaly what hardmodes were in ulduar, you just had to trigger them instead of choosing the difficulty before the boss

Yes, it would. It’s so different on its face that I’m not really even sure how to explain this to you.

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now, would it trully be so different from todays raid concept where you choose difficulty an based on that enemies have more hp and dmg and some different abilities? bcs thats basicaly what hardmodes were in ulduar, you just had to trigger them instead of choosing the difficulty before the boss

i got the concept as whole, and its not bad idea, but it seems just too much work for a very minor change that most ppl wouldnt really care about

I personally know at least ten people who raided for years and no longer raid because of the difficulty-slider design. I think that you are making a mistake assuming nobody cares about it. For a significant number of people, beating a raid on LFR or even Normal sucks all the excitement out of doing higher difficulties.

This isn’t even debatable or controversial, honestly. Beating a game with game genie on NES also sucks the fun out of achieving it for real.