Essences and benthic gear have really turned a lot of people off raiding. Nobody wants to farm either or wanted to so a lot of people just quit this tier, and ashvane being as hard a check as it was early on basically wiped out a large number of guilds/caused even more people to quit.
My guild wiped more on asvhane than za'qul for fucks sake. Queen was also a brutal fight as far as end bosses go.
Last edited by Tradu; 2019-12-17 at 01:10 PM.
It's grind and poeple leaving the game I'm sure the same thing was happening to 4000 rank guilds back in mop, where there used to be 50000 bottom guilds feeding the top in mop now there is 14000. I dont know if its gotten too hard or just not enough talent left prob a bit of both.
You described the situation of my guild exactly.
I am an officer of my guild and being able to constantly maintain the same 20 people to do ETP My is practically impossible due to the reasons you described above.
I also hope that this situation in the next expansion will be evaluated a little better by the blizz.
If you do that, all the m+ monkeys are gonna cry they're "forced to raid" to get the best gear, and the game "is again raid or die".
Basically, m+ has ruined the gearing curve.
Increasing rewards for m+ to the point the gear staggers and increased all the way to +20 or so will only accomplish that more people swap to m+, fewer people raid, people still gear up in under a month, and m+ boost community counts the gold.
M+ gearing curve cannot be balanced because it has 2 inherent advantages over raiding, 1) requires fewer people so it's less of a logistical hurdle to assemble 2) has no lockout.
Remember when dungeons had lockouts? Like daily heroic or weekly m0? Then you could pace out the gear and make an expected gearing curve.
The only way you bring it back is "nerf" m+ in a way that for example weekly chest rewards 3-5 items up from 1, but the dungeons themselves don't reward any. The m+ community would riot though. M+ is a bonanza for gearing up alts, boosting and getting a big ilvl spike at the start of every season.
It's a pandora box that once opened, cannot be closed. We're forever doomed to have a gearing curve that isn't smooth, but a huge bump around the peak of week 2-3 of the season then awfully slows down.
We're stuck in a scenario where encounter tuning team has to account for people farming m+ as soon as floodgates open, and after that the room to grow and outgear is limited to around 15 ilvls tops.
You could compensate with not ilvls, but side power like having better trinkets, weapons with procs, etc. at the later bosses in the raid, but guess what, again m+ community is gonna cry about being forced to raid to get the best gear. So we're stuck with "weapons with procs" like the ones from Underrot and King's Rest being BIS for respective classes whole expac and every season raiders have to refarm them. But I guess raiders being forced to m+ is fine, m+ people being forced to raid = bad.
Now 8.3 is coming and I'm already dreading the notion that m+ Mechagon gear is gonna be broken op.
That's also the reason why we've seen ap and other grinds enter the scene when m+ did. Blizzard needed another form of "artificially gated progress" to create a progression curve, after gear stopped being one because it started being handed out left and right.
People just want to coast without working to improve themselves and stay in the same guild they joined that took 50 pulls to beat heroic Azshara. Then they complain about not being able to beat the hardest content.
If you want more progress, you have to work your way up. That includes joining a guild capable of that progress if yours isn't. It's not easy or even fun for most of the journey. But it is worth it if you find progress meaningful.
We made the journey from a top 500-1000 guild into what is now approx 150 ranked guild and reduced our raiding hours doing it (from 12 hours/week to 10 hours). The ocean of skill between players in top 2k to top 200 is vast, you simply don't realise it when you're at the bottom of the barrel. We have more or less replaced 95% of the guild along the way, because they held us back.
Keep hoping, they don't do anything, literally last time they merged servers was in MOP, while the sub count keeps dropping. They "acknowledged the problem" on last Blizzcon but yet anything is to happen, they didn't follow up with any action so far.
I don't wanna be a "tinfoil hat" cynic, but indeed it looks like they're trying to milk raiders for transfers and faction changes as they keep roaming between servers in hopes to find a place where they can either recruit or join a guild. Casuals are less milkable than raiders who are more dedicated and attached to their characters. So casuals can do everything xrealm even if they're on a dead server, meanwhile mythic raiders have to keep paying as servers die.
I can't believe some EU servers that used to be full like Al'Akir, Outland, Frostmane are now dead. You could have picked a server that was fairly lively from vanilla to cata, and now it's dead.
The push for 20 man size didn't help, the push away from raiding as the ultimate endgame didn't help, lowering rewards from raiding didn't help (removal of tier sets), the design favouring or straight out forcing specific classes and specs to be "the solution to the puzzle" on various encounters didn't help. Yes, method can field 7 warlocks or rogues when they need to, some average rank 1000 guild cannot.
Hell, my previous guild disbanded at 7/8 mythic EP for multiple reasons, but it's been a slow death whole BFA, and many combined factors, one was burnout from the constant grind, another was Crucible launched in a state that told many guilds "mythic isn't for you anymore", another was the state of Alliance recruitment pool, another was severe class imbalance forcing people to reroll, specific classes be benched, etc. Classic just sealed the deal, the guild was in zombie state since basically Crucible (that we skipped).
Tbh Legion with its AP / leggo grind was a big guild killer as well, I think I went through 4 different guilds and none of them survived to this day.
You can't design a game around people investing heavy hours into their character, class and spec, and then punish them for that choice by wide swings of class balance that move your spec from the best to the worst. People will just quit. Not many can stomach constant rerolling because their main just got gutted. For example look how often you see druids of any other spec than balance on mythic Azshara.
I wouldnt call Cata Raids hard, in my opinion apart from 4 Bosses (council,Rag,Blackhorn,Spine) and that shiffted depending on Raid size, because some where easier on 10 other on 25 but the rest wasnt that hard (coming from someone who had a World Top 50 heroic kill on Baleroc for example, because it was such a pushover in 10 M). Think the problem is more likely along the lines of the Points many pointed out in this thread:
- Grinding over the course of an whole Exp (since Legion it is this way and it is one point that got me away from raiding) be it AP, doing M+ etc
- Gear being to easy to obtain and so relatively meaningless
- Player losing interest because of the design/harshness of mechanics etc
- No Real feeling of getting stronger over the course of the Exp esp in BFA
Let´s face it since Legion how much more did you need to Play to Raid? Farming AP/Azerite day in day out till you hit max or something adequat to it, doing weekly M+ Runs (if possibly with Guild Mates because you dont want to PUG it, at the start of each season/tier more than you prob like because youre gear is outdated). Maybe farm you Raid consumables because your Raid doesnt support you on those and you dont want to spend Gold on it (and dont forget you need them for M+ aswell).
Were is the Time for fun in this? (everybody has its own definition of that i know i know)
But for me it got killed with this stupid amount of grind, esp if you have to consider maybe you want an alt. There you would need to grind the whole "sh*t" again.
I do miss the days till Legion where farming once a week was enough to support my needs and do other things in Game after the initial Grind of maybe 4 Weeks with Dailys and Reps, personaly i think it was the better system compared to the state of grind it is now.
I SURE HOPE someone at Blizzard reads this post lol, it's absolutely perfect
I personally havent done much grinding. I had to spam some islands to get 65 but that was completely on myself. No requirement, we could have killed Azshara with or without 65. People assume you need a certain neck level to complete content, on the contrary, the neck levels is there as soft nerfs to the raid.
Peak raiding was vanilla and BC because you had server communities. It was a vastly more complex and interesting raiding scene back then, as you not only tried to kill raid bosses to advance and get loot, but you were racing other guilds on your same server for 1st kills. You would wipe on a raid boss, and then during the downtime you'd wait for reports of rival guilds killing bosses and hoping they don't pass you or get further ahead. Or if you downed a boss, you'd spread the word with glee across your server to let everyone know your guild is moving up your server rankings.
Today, raiding feels like a SHELL of its former self because there is no server community. I kill a boss. I don't kill a boss. No-one cares either way. The Hall of Fame achievement means nothing to anyone either. Its hollow. I'd remove Hall of Fame from the game, period. Its just stupid.
One way to try to recapture the feel of the old server community would be guild LEAGUES. You get paired up with other raiding guilds into a league and compete with rival guilds in your league for 1st kills. Award prizes for winning your league, for 2nd place, 3rd place, etc. A KEY component of league play would be communication within the league. Create an observer mode. Allow anyone in the league to observe your guild's raid attempts. Include a league chat feature and bulletin board. THAT would make raiding great again.
Modern raiding feels meaningless.
TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.
2 officers, GM are the ones still there, basically. When you try to push ranks, you quickly see which players cant keep up with learning the fights fast enough. At our current pace we almost have to kill at least 1 boss per raid. So if we have some raiders fail over and over during that night they arent good enough. And back when we were 500-1000 you could always look at guides or multiple guilds, but the higher you go, the less info there is. Not everyone can copy Method strats cus they usually require insane prep/skill.
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This sort of already happens but its not stated anywhere. We look at guilds within 3 day schedule and compete with them for best 3 day guild etc. Everyone can find their niche
I kinda agree with OP, but on the othet hand i dont.
The line has to be drawn somewhere. Its ok that all arnt able to clear mythic.
But i still think that mythic is too hard, compared to heroic.
And it is hard in the wrong way. A perfect class setup is crucial. It can still be done with other classes, but it gets a lot harder.
And i hate bosses that fuck you in the ass, if you have too much dps, which can cause a bad mechanic overlap. Imo It should always be the more dps, the better, from start to finish.
The mechanics of the 2 last bosses are boring but very punishing. Their strategy is to bore us to sleep and then 1shot us and 1fuck up = wipe.
These sorta mechanics are what ion said that they wanted to remove from raiding, but they didnt.
Zaqul is one of the worst bosses in recent Times, Azshara not much better. But i think the OP is directing his anger in the wrong direction. Raiding has been one of the few saving graces for this incredibly flawed game. No not everyone should clear mythic, improve and adapt if you want to do it. Stop with the hand out shit
Effort never mattered. Only performance. The only time "effort" matters (read: willingness to do tedious bullshit below your level of expertise) is in a video game. Or do you think pro baseball players go back and hit t-ball every day for 4 hours before a big game?
See, in real life, once you get the requisite skill for something and master one level, you move on to the next.
That's how video games with stuff like this should be. It's how all proper video games are designed. Only market it's not is fucking MMOs, and it's pathetic. "But then we'd run out of things to do!" I'm not looking for some kind of zone-out activity from a video game. That's what TV, music, and netflix are for.