20 man mythic recruitment killing my guild...what about you?

[Osmeric]

What a vapid, pointless thing to say.

That's like saying "people work jobs to get paid."

It's not vapid at all. The central mechanism of the game is to provide the illusion that the "work" one does is somehow not just a waste of time, but provides a later payoff. This is distinct from a game in which the gameplay itself is inherently rewarding.

[Relapses]

It's not vapid at all. The central mechanism of the game is to provide the illusion that the "work" one does is somehow not just a waste of time, but provides a later payoff. This is distinct from a game in which the gameplay itself is inherently rewarding.

Isn't that... like... kind of the point of pretty much any game? Perhaps the feedback loop in a MMO is slightly more regimented and that was the angle you were going for but it reads to me like you're trying to say something profound about how WoW works when you're really not saying anything at all.

[GreenJesus]

I returned to WoW in Legion and played in 5 guilds since then. Every one of those guilds had plenty of issues recruiting new people and end up being unable to raid because not enough people => raids cancelled => competent players left => end of story.

My solution would be to introduce slightly flexible format for mythic raids. Something like 17-23. It's flexible enough to be able to recruit enough people, not having them benched in Wednesday and not having raid cancelled because of few people not showing up and it's hard enough to break encounters.

It should be enabled along with cross-server raiding after first 10 horde guilds kill the last boss. The race is over, nobody really cares about balance at this point.

Just reducing raid size will not help, as all problems will remain. Even at bigger scale. I was RL in Cataclysm and I know well all the issues of 10-man raid. They're not fundamentally different and smaller raid sizes introduce its own issues (like some class being required for some encounters).

I'm tired of those issues as I hate to switch guilds and constantly adapt to new people. So I'll stop playing WoW soon enough and that issue is one of the most important game problems for me.

It's funny that SL made those issues even worse in one aspect. If you want an item from raid chest, you need to kill 3 bosses. If you're benched, you won't have that item. Oops. Now nobody wants to be benched, even if you don't need loot from those bosses. This aspect was not well thought-out.

Yep. Its annoying with raid id lockouts that if you only have 18 people show up you just have to call it for the night. No one in trade chat is going to show up for mythic sludgefist prog. Real life stuff happens and people cant show up. The "elitist jerks" at blizzard needs to realize that their restrictive and demanding structure is just killing the game for thousands of guilds.

[kaminaris]

10 man size is not raiding its just too small and it does limit encounter design as you have to do it for less members, if you want to 10 man raid you have heroic, mythic should always remain at min 20 people as thats a suitable size to design fights around, it also allows for just about every class to have a raid spot.

If you cant recruit 20 members to raid with you dont deserve to raid mythic.

Thats cool but its just your opinion. 10 Mans worked in the past so apparently it was never a problem in the past. Also I could say if you cant handle 10 mans responsibility you don't deserve to raid mythic.

[kenn9530]

Thats cool but its just your opinion. 10 Mans worked in the past so apparently it was never a problem in the past. Also I could say if you cant handle 10 mans responsibility you don't deserve to raid mythic.

10 man raiding was never considered proper raiding in the past so it never worked properly, some bosses were far easier on 10 man and some were far harder, the hardest level raiding should always remain one set size and 20 is the minimum, 25 is the most ideal raid size and it gives every single class at least 1 raid spot.

Not everyone is made to do mythic raiding and most guilds fail trying to do what they are not built for, if your unable to get 20 players then mythic raiding is not for you. 10 mans were still far easier to complete than a 25 man overall and gave barely a challenge.

[Relapses]

Thats cool but its just your opinion. 10 Mans worked in the past so apparently it was never a problem in the past. Also I could say if you cant handle 10 mans responsibility you don't deserve to raid mythic.

I wouldn't say that 10M Heroic "worked," though. It was popular but it severely restricted Blizzard's encounter design team because they have to essentially create two versions of every encounter. They moved to 20M Mythic because it allowed them to go back to designing encounters around a single raid size while still allowing class representation to matter. It also helped refocus endgame raiding back on progression, something 10M Heroic had let by the wayside.

[-Zo-]

I keep joining newly forming guilds. I like the idea of helping build things like that, and I dislike the idea of being "carried" due to someone else's work. Then they blow up, so that's mostly on me I guess, but it's also circumstance, unless you want to pay to transfer servers all the time whether Guild X needs a monk healer (spoiler, they don't) and raid days/times that work, and somewhat aligned goals, is highly variable, so there isn't always much of a choice.

But I think Bliz could prob think of some ways to throw guilds some kind of bone. It's ultimately bad for your game if so many guilds end in disappointment without accomplishing much. I personally find it difficult to join a new guild, make friends in it, get used to everyone's voices and tendencies in raid, etc. It's a turn off when it's so common to need to play the "guild" game instead of killing bosses. I've been in guilds spanning expansions but these days that seems rare.

This is where Bliz should step in and throw guilds in general, a bone. This is their craft after all right? Why they make the big bucks? I feel like flex Mythic should be a thing. For those that care about world first, require it to be done with 20, let everyone else stop stressing so much about recruiting and maintaining a bench. Mythic raids are never balanced at first anyway, so I don't really see the harm. Or who knows. Certainly a team of creative people can think of ways to make things work better.

There's always been pressure, recruiting and keeping a bench where you can actually sit people if they're having an off night, keeping the ranks filled, not having missed raids during holidays, I've been through all that, but I really feel like it's a lot worse these days than it used to be. Maybe I just got unlucky.

[Helander]

Dissolve factions, let us cross realm mythic the second world first is achieved. Problem solved.

[Relapses]

Not everyone is made to do mythic raiding and most guilds fail trying to do what they are not built for, if your unable to get 20 players then mythic raiding is not for you. 10 mans were still far easier to complete than a 25 man overall and gave barely a challenge.

My guild called 10M Heroic the WNBA of raiding, LOL. I wouldn't have got a few my CEs in MoP if not for 10M Heroic though so I can't say that I fully agree with the take that 10M was overall easier. There were aspects that were easier but it was still challenging content for the most part. I touched on this in my post on the last page but I think one of the biggest motivating factors for Blizzard to move endgame raiding back to a larger raid size was the fact that "casual hardcore" raiding had become its own subgenre. These were guilds/PuGs that had no intention of clearing a raid instance and instead wanted to farm only the "easy" bosses and call it a day. The ease of logistics lent itself to this and while not all 10M Heroic guilds identified this way, they had become extremely popular by the end of MoP. I don't think Blizzard ever really intended for this to be the case and you rarely saw 25M Heroic guilds doing the same since the difficulty of logistics naturally lent itself to a progression raiding mentality. (I'll let you guess which type of 10M Heroic guild struggled the most to put together a decent 20M roster.)

[Tr0up141]

Uniting the playerbases through no faction barriers would be an easy step. They could also just make mythic flex with the warning that "yeah 20 man is ideal but if you have less or more you can still play at your own risk."

[MrKnowItAll]

Brother, it's not about the debates happening. It's the fact that it was imbalanced and simply ignoring the fact that it was imbalanced so that you can continue living in an insular world where the problem doesn't exist isn't actually solving a problem.

Some mechanics might be harder in 10-man but we didnt give a flying fuck since at least we can raid and have fun. Its about giving players options to do what they want.

[Zyky]

Raids are not about gear they are about clearing the content simple as that

Raids have always been about the rewards, it's not about "clearing content" lol. If there wasn't rewards players wouldn't do it. We have statistical evidence of this fact, as rewards got less and less rewarding the playerbase who cared about Mythic decreased. Even the mounts aren't that special anymore because they just reskin shit now. Case and point: N'zoth Mythic mount was a reskin of the Kosumoth mount from 7.0.3

anything less that 20 players is not really a raid as 20 slot also give most classes the chance at actually having a raid slot, anything less and some classes are going to be made irrelevant completely.

And yet 10 man was wildly successful for several expansions prior to forced 20 man.

There's a very simple solution to what you're saying, Blizzard needs to stop garbage tuning on classes. Warriors are a phenomenal example of this, they got upwards of 20% of raw damage buffs for both dps specs, they're still low end of the charts, why? Because they're designed around the majority of their damage being execute and as people get more gear, fights become shorter and shorter, which means execute windows get smaller and smaller.

If Blizzard doesn't do garbage design philosophies every single class will have playability in 10 man. This is also evidenced with statistical facts from prior tiers, Dragon Soul, Throne of Thunder, Siege of Orgrimmar.

WoW is an old game, they have to try different boss mechanics just to keep things interesting so boss fights should get harder over the years, the whole point in mythic raids is to kill challenging boss fights.

Different boss mechanics are fine, throwing 3 spells together just because it's a shitty overlap is bad design. Go back and look at encounters from Mythic Blackrock Foundry, these fights were difficult and every single fight was unique. Only one encounter had shit overlaps on Mythic and none of them punished you for your DPS being too high. Meanwhile Legion had 3 encounters that punished you, BFA had 7, and we're already at 2 in Shadowlands. One encounter an expansion with garbage overlaps is fine, multiples an expansion, multiples per tier, that's absolute garbage design and it's an illusion of difficulty because there's no skill involved when it comes to dealing with the overlaps, it's 100% about bashing your head against the wall until it lines up properly: example healing debuffs on Mythic Xy'mox not going on seed carriers during the Annihilation.

It has nothing to do with them trying to make new and unique fights, it has to do with them taking mechanics and making them overlap for an illusion of difficulty. I think we can all agree that new and interesting mechanics are fun and healthy for the game overall, what isn't is when they take 4-5 mechanics, make it so only a handful of classes can even manage that mechanical overlap, then say "nope lol fuck you because RNG".

[Osmeric]

Isn't that... like... kind of the point of pretty much any game?

No. In many games, you play for the moment. You enjoy what you are doing now, instead of being satisfied working toward some goal, especially some goal that is in some sense artificial or fake.

I think in SL the devs really misconstrued why many people play the game, thinking it was intrinsic gameplay rather than this artificial motivation, and made design changes on that basis. And as a result, people noticed that the game suddenly stopped doing it for them.

[kenn9530]

My guild called 10M Heroic the WNBA of raiding, LOL. I wouldn't have got a few my CEs in MoP if not for 10M Heroic though so I can't say that I fully agree with the take that 10M was overall easier. There were aspects that were easier but it was still challenging content for the most part. I touched on this in my post on the last page but I think one of the biggest motivating factors for Blizzard to move endgame raiding back to a larger raid size was the fact that "casual hardcore" raiding had become its own subgenre. These were guilds/PuGs that had no intention of clearing a raid instance and instead wanted to farm only the "easy" bosses and call it a day. The ease of logistics lent itself to this and while not all 10M Heroic guilds identified this way, they had become extremely popular by the end of MoP. I don't think Blizzard ever really intended for this to be the case and you rarely saw 25M Heroic guilds doing the same since the difficulty of logistics naturally lent itself to a progression raiding mentality. (I'll let you guess which type of 10M Heroic guild struggled the most to put together a decent 20M roster.)

10 m heroic was miles easier, much less to coordinate so dealing with less mechanics and more floor space, in MoP it was so easy to find groups you could easily PuG SoG and farm the mounts, overall 10 man raiding was easier and the raid was completed much faster than a 25 man, its also far easier to make sure you have 10 decent players who can do mechanics than 25 man as thats one of the main reasons for raids being hard.

snip

Raids you are rewarded by completing them so you always get the gear regardless so raiders dont really care about gear as thats easy to aquire. The main rewards are title from last boss along with CE, and if a mount drops from that boss.

10 mans were easier so more ppl had access to them, raids should be challenging and they just cant be balanced properly if there are multiple versions of the same difficulty, 10 man raiding is not real raiding.

If you just create multiple versions of the same difficulty it just devalues the content and forces teams to do whichever is easier.

[oplawlz]

Thats cool but its just your opinion. 10 Mans worked in the past so apparently it was never a problem in the past.

Of course it was a problem, that's why it was changed.

[Hinastorm]

Recruit. Players.

This is not a Blizzard problem. It's a you problem.

It's not that simple and you know it.

Raids having a hard 20 requirement creates the problem of "Well we're down 1 person, gg I guess" And or having a bench and leaving people out. That sucks.

[Sithalos]

Mythic isn't the problem, Shadowlands is.

Blizzard loves to antagonize people that care about their game for some odd reason, and it's starting to show. Good players are getting harder to find, and it's only going to get worse.

I think SL is just not very popular and that people are leaving left and right, meaning your attempts to recruit will not be very successful.

Pretty much this.

[Zyky]

Of course it was a problem, that's why it was changed.

It wasn't a problem lol. The problem was 25 man, the groups doing 25 man heroic raiding were significantly fewer than the groups doing 10 man heroic. This is why you always see people wanting 10 man back and not wanting 25 man back. 10 man was significantly more enjoyable for the majority of the raiding playerbase. So how does Blizzard fix that issue? You decrease 25 mans requirement and go back to only 1 raid size for the hardest content. This forced players who wanted to remain raiding in 10 man guilds to either pull other 10 man groups into their guilds or to find new guilds to be a part of. This was a business strategy for profit, not a business strategy to keep consumers happy.

We also have pretty solid evidence that this was not a well received change overall with how Mythic engagement(since implementation in WoD) has been and has remained significantly less active than Heroic raiding ever was.

[Mightytasty]

I never understood why Mythic raiding is so restrictive. Can someone tell me why Blizzard can't just:

1) Get rid of faction-specific "Hall of Fame". Open cross-realm mythic after World 100 is complete, or do it from the start because who cares.
2) Get rid of lockouts. (What's the point? Personal loot exists)

[Argorwal]

I never understood why Mythic raiding is so restrictive. Can someone tell me why Blizzard can't just:

1) Get rid of faction-specific "Hall of Fame". Open cross-realm mythic after World 100 is complete, or do it from the start because who cares.
2) Get rid of lockouts. (What's the point? Personal loot exists)

If mythic lockouts went to boss based rather than raid ID based I honestly think guild will struggle even harder to maintain a stable roster.