5man instances are overused; people can't fill up their 20mans; the solution is clear

[Relapses]

No one is suggesting the removal of raiding nor are they suggesting the gutting of it as a whole either.

...the comment chain you're replying to started off with some dude suggesting that "only 15% of players would quit if raiding was removed altogether," written by a guy who self-admittedly hasn't raided since Wrath.

[jeezusisacasual]

...the comment chain you're replying to started off with some dude suggesting that "only 15% of players would quit if raiding was removed altogether," written by a guy who self-admittedly hasn't raided since Wrath.

yea i should have known better honestly.

[Thunderball]

People cant fill their 20 mans because:

- Mythic is hard, as it should be.
- Heroic loot is mostly irrelevant because you get better loot M+, it's much faster and in most cases much easier.

[Feeline10]

No one is suggesting the removal of raiding nor are they suggesting the gutting of it as a whole either, its the logistical nightmare and dedicated time on a weekly basis is what makes it miserable to people who just love to play games not a single game. If they limit the gains of mythic plus to nudge or push players into that direction is what will cause them more problems is what most of us are saying. Also raiding should not be the only end game progression and people should have options to advance their toon or satisfy goals with similar altho 6 item levels lower ( its a big deal i promise xD ).

I posted in another thread why smaller more personal groups are better for me and why i think clicks are formed to begin with, i used to raid with people and mute half of them, not recall their names or know what their voice sounded like because outside of my small group of friends i could care less, i was there for the tier sets to push challenge modes or sell carries when i was not raiding. Now if they keep the creation catalyst going forward there will never be a reason to ever raid and i would be nothing but greatful for that, if people want to raid sure by all means but stop making it the only game in town.

Raiding, or group content in general, is not for those who have difficulty not being socially awkward. No worries friend, many other activities for you to partake in.

[Koloss]

No, it really isn't the issue of difficulty. Getting 19 people to line up their schedules is more than twice as hard as getting 9 people to line up their schedules, and then you have to take into account more people means more personalities and more potential for interpersonal conflict.

My issues with 20man, and 25man raiding, have always been the amount of people. I don't enjoy the social environment in 20/25man raiding. It is too crowded for me to enjoy it, instead it just exhausts me socially. 5man isn't a decent compromise for me because I hate that content, 10man is the only mode that worked for me. The content was difficult enough (some fights were harder on 25man, and vice versa), and the social environment was cozy enough for me to actually interact with and get to know my raid members.

Also: Fuck the world first race and the pointless debates over which was more difficult. The world first race is only relevant for the few hundred people who seriously are participating in it. Anyone up in arms over it is just as annoying as sports fans who bitch about their sports team losing, and just as pointless to pay heed to. The people actually running the race are such a minority of the playerbase that they're not worth listening to either when it comes to claims of which mode was the "real" mode.

This is how i feel like too, i just prefer less people. Less shit-talk and more percentage of people i enjoy playing with. This is a completely subjective thing tho. But i'm sure if anyone would make an official poll asking what raid size would you like from a social aspect then those who actually play mythic would go with less than 20-man. I'd even be okay with 15-man personally.

About WFR: Unfortunately WFR matters to some people, but there could be technical ways to keep the WFR 20-man and to be playable by anyone who prefers that size, while others who prefer smaller size and only play for fun and not as a job could have their 10/15/flex or whatever size separately. But i also do think that Blizzard overvalues WFR a bit as twitch viewers don't grant long subs.

On an unrelated note i also don't like that they handle mythic as a super-hard difficulty that you only can do with guilds. I see no reason for it being non-cross-realm from the start and also no reason to have its ID. Removing the ID system could make it much more puggable, you could join a progression raid on a harder boss while you screwed your ID on a one boss pug because something went wrong. It's just stupid these systems still exist. Some Mythic bosses would be even more easily puggable than the end bosses in Heroic if such system didn't exist. The only reason i can imaginge is WFR, but again there could be technical ways to address it.

Let's say ppl only get realm-first and world-first achievments if they participate in a 20-man raid which has people only from the same realm and guild and voilá, you have WFR race. Let other ppl just pug it if they want or let them have a guild with less Mythic raider people.

[cozzri]

Well good news,10 man raiding is still a thing!

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stick to lfr,the game has 4 difficulties,you not being good enough to do all 4 isnt a point against the game,this is why wow became shit,they started to cater to badies,and yeah i get it,its smarter to try to cater to your largest playerbase,but fromsoft proves that the desire for challenging gameplay isnt dead

personaly i think lfr and normal should go away,you have youtube videos if you wanna see the raid,and if raiding is to hard,theres always 5 mans for you

Honestly, the opposite is true; making the raids more difficult fractured the community. Most raids were diverse in the skill level of people brought in for 40s; i distinctly remember slow people, 4 year olds, tryhards, disabilities, etc all raiding in the same group. One difficulty.

If you want to get to the heart of the problem all you have to do is look at the numbers. Splitting the community over so many difficult levels of what essentially is the same raid has caused population issues. Stratification of the players cause guilds to split, and the population numbers of the game speak for themselves.

[bullseyed]

This whole statement is based on fiction. In classic it was not hard to fill raids with 40 people. So the thing that makes it hard to fill up a mythic raid team is clearly not the fact that it requires 20 people. Being hard to fill is a symptom and not the cause.

This. One server has 10s or even 100+ mythic raid guilds, each with 20+ people. They could very obviously go back to 40 man for mythic with no issue, just would have to merge mythic guilds 2:1 on average. When people talk about it being hard to fill raids, they mean their guild leadership is carrying people, so no one wants to stick around for that.

Cutting to 10 man (or even 15 man) mythic would be nice because of the number of mechanics that spawn 1000 adds and lag people out. Fewer people means fewer calculations means more stability.

On the other hand, 10 and 15 man limits a lot of the mechanics they can do, and cuts into spec buffs with limited slots. That's why 20 won't change.

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Honestly, the opposite is true; making the raids more difficult fractured the community. Most raids were diverse in the skill level of people brought in for 40s; i distinctly remember slow people, 4 year olds, tryhards, disabilities, etc all raiding in the same group. One difficulty.

If you want to get to the heart of the problem all you have to do is look at the numbers. Splitting the community over so many difficult levels of what essentially is the same raid has caused population issues. Stratification of the players cause guilds to split, and the population numbers of the game speak for themselves.

People being dumb and bad back then with regards to guild organizing doesn't change anything though. People thought raids were "hard" because they didn't know how badly they were carrying half the raid. With addons and combat logs and simbots today it is easy to find those people and remove them.

Going back to classic style raiding wouldn't lead to blended groups, it would lead to WoWClassic, where raid bosses die in 17 seconds if you have 40 decent players.

[craigw]

This. One server has 10s or even 100+ mythic raid guilds, each with 20+ people. They could very obviously go back to 40 man for mythic with no issue, just would have to merge mythic guilds 2:1 on average. When people talk about it being hard to fill raids, they mean their guild leadership is carrying people, so no one wants to stick around for that.

Cutting to 10 man (or even 15 man) mythic would be nice because of the number of mechanics that spawn 1000 adds and lag people out. Fewer people means fewer calculations means more stability.

On the other hand, 10 and 15 man limits a lot of the mechanics they can do, and cuts into spec buffs with limited slots. That's why 20 won't change.

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People being dumb and bad back then with regards to guild organizing doesn't change anything though. People thought raids were "hard" because they didn't know how badly they were carrying half the raid. With addons and combat logs and simbots today it is easy to find those people and remove them.

Going back to classic style raiding wouldn't lead to blended groups, it would lead to WoWClassic, where raid bosses die in 17 seconds if you have 40 decent players.

i believe you are 100% correct on the bold. the game was never really hard the first 6 years or so. people were just bad and it took time to figure out who and why. logs and add ons. an absolute must for the game.

[hulkgor]

"5-man instances are overused"

lol

[epigramx]

By the way: I should had renamed the initial post to say clearly "map" or "dungeon" instead of "instance" because the most important part of the suggestion is that it wouldn't be shared dungeons with 20man but now it's done and some people get it I believe.

"5-man instances are overused"

lol

"lol" they are. You first enter the game and do a few levels: 5mans; you then go end game and try to level or get the first end-game gear: 5mans; a new major in-expansion comes and you have to prepare for the latest end-game: 5mans again.

[cozzri]

i believe you are 100% correct on the bold. the game was never really hard the first 6 years or so. people were just bad and it took time to figure out who and why. logs and add ons. an absolute must for the game.

Is raiding with bad players such an awful thing if they are your friends / family members. Giving up on the important people to get higher numbers.... Been there, done that; looking back is definitely wasn't worth it.

Carrying people, especially friends and family, shouldn't be considered a bad thing honestly; I've seen the player focus shift drastically to the numbers, attributed to gearscore towards the end of Wrath, many guilds split up for the sake of raiding the next higher difficulty to get the gear to be better at pvp, a very individualist approach to a MMO; raiding should be more social than just, im using these other good players to boost my ilvl.

The shift from social to numbers is why a lot of players wanted classic. Min/max was simpler. You had time to have a more balanced gameplay experience than just grind ilvl indefinitely.

[Richardbro]

5 mans are tuned appropriately, friends and family guilds can do +2-10 pretty easily while having fun.

Raiding is tuned really badly, even on normal mode I have seen family and friend guilds struggle and disband. At the start of Shadowlands, I had a few friends return and quit after their casual guilds couldn't even get past the 4th boss (Inerva) after 5 weeks.

Raiding needs a steep decrease in difficulty for all its 4 difficulties. Normal should be cleared by friends and family and casuals quite easily. It needs to almost be a loot pinata like wrath raiding was.

Each difficulty should be cleared by its intended audience by a month, not 2-5 months like it is now.

[exochaft]

The shift from social to numbers is why a lot of players wanted classic. Min/max was simpler. You had time to have a more balanced gameplay experience than just grind ilvl indefinitely.

While I think the player base has evolved to focus more on the numbers versus the social aspect, the most damning issue is that Blizz has followed suit and fostered this change instead of opposing it. What was great about the raids in the early years of WoW was that basically anyone could do them, as classic has shown people. It may have felt artificially harder at the time due to lack of resources and information that are easily found nowadays, but one cannot compare the difficulty of the old raids to what we have on live as being even close to similar.

There's tons of reasons why Blizz wanted to increase the difficulty of raids, but I feel like their motivations for doing so are vastly different now compared to their reasons in the past. Simply put, Blizz doesn't really care about the social aspect of the game as much as it should while focusing on the numerical side of things. While numerical data is important, not everything that's really important to the game can be easily quantified. If anything, Blizz should return to why they made the game in the first place and why it was so popular with average people: it was a game that was made for casual people in a market full of hardcore/grindy/time-intensive MMOs. In a poetic fashion, Blizz has made WoW into an MMO they were trying not to be.

When it comes to specific changes in the raiding scene, I'd slash the difficulty hard on all levels. By doing so, you could get rid of LFR as normal would be a viable replacement for what it's supposed to be (or you can make a normal queuing system for wings, design raids to be easily done in just wings, there's a ton of ways to go about making it less time intensive). Furthermore, axing the difficulty allows you to make every raid difficulty, mythic included, flex raiding. The main excuse for not having the hardest difficulty of raid flex is because it's tuned so high and tightly that it can't be flex. However, I think this way of thinking is flawed as well as the focus on 'balance > everything else' is just a trap that restricts your potential. Personally, I'd rather just get rid of mythic mode completely at this point and replace it with hard modes that can be done on heroic for vanity/bragging rights/achievements/etc... but not power. Solves the issues of ilvl scaling and progression, which makes the current mythic raiding a pain.

While I could take hours going into potential solutions, ultimately the main issues is that Blizz is stuck in a certain way of thinking that is not conducive to making a great experience for the audience that made their game so popular. Blizz also tends to forget lessons learned in the past, repeats the same mistakes, and so forth. While there's some glimmer of hope with announced changes coming in Dragonflight, the overall message and attitude given on by Blizz is not hopeful.

[jeezusisacasual]

Raiding, or group content in general, is not for those who have difficulty not being socially awkward. No worries friend, many other activities for you to partake in.

I am a production minded player, once i accomplish my own personal goals i am gone until the next season that is why MMO's are not my jam anymore. I gave up raiding because there is no incentive or its so intricate that requires dark souls like gameplay plus i do not really enjoy engaging with most raiders in general. Now while KSM gives me a goal i can complete fairly quickly while taking a trip down memory lane of a game that i used to love why not? 2-3 weeks worth of enjoyment is worth the price of admission since my own personal goals can be completed in that time frame.

I learned raiding wont change so i figured why not remove myself from it and spend more of my free time in other activities. This is why join a guild is pointless for me, if i do not want to log on for raid should i be punished for it? If i would rather watch a game on tv instead of raid should it be held against me? Dungeons and dragons weekly slog sessions is not pick up and play meaning i want as little to do with it as possible.

If raids stayed around TBC level difficulty i would be fine to just jump in and out without a guild or team and all would be well with the world but they changed that. More Emerald Nightmare less Tomb of Sargeras.

[Sugani]

Honestly, they should do what they should have done long ago.

First, throw out the keystone system and allow players to play any dungeon they want, when they want, at the difficulty they want. The keystone system is just a way to time gate progression through randomized drops. It's contrived and gets in the player's way of progressing. Just turn the keystone pedestal into a difficulty selector.

DUNGEONS.
Remove Heroic mode, and replace it with Mythic +0 to be the baseline max-level difficulty version. It can be balanced in a way where the current Heroic is just Mythic +0, and tweak the scaling, so +2 is where +0 used to be. This would throw all players into understanding the mythic system instead of having a 'Heroic stop-gap' before proceeding into Mythic. Keep normal as it functions as the standard leveling dungeon experience that scales your group accordingly and can queue in using matchmaking.

RAIDING.
Do the same thing. Keep LFR precisely the same, but call it Normal and allow players to matchmake into it as you'd expect. Then fold current Normal, Heroic, and Mythic into just Mythic. Mythic +0 would be where normal is, +2 is where heroic is, and after that, scale it up indefinitely to allow players to express how good they want to be. And the whole system is 'flex' up to 30 players no matter the difficulty.

For the player's sake, throw an NPC or a 'keystone pedestal' in the boss room the raid leader can interact with to adjust the difficulty before each pull. Does your group want to start with a +5? Too hard, okay, lower it to +4. Loot, obviously, just like mythic, would scale based on difficulty. Adjust loot lockouts based on boss kills for a given week; you can still only kill a raid boss once per week, regardless of difficulty. Alternatively, you could try and allow players to get multiple pieces of loot each week from a boss, maybe two or three per week, but that would likely spawn degenerative gameplay. For flavor, maybe there is a seasonal affix or two for raiding, a constant mechanic that persists throughout each boss encounter rotating every week or two so players have some additional variety when playing. Nothing anywhere near as complex as what Mythic Dungeons have.

This would create a consistent divide, where normal modes are the matchmade easier difficulty that allows players to experience the story and play casually. Mythic would be for more involved players looking to build their own group and challenge themselves with a sliding scale of difficulty so they can adjust to the level that works best for them.

Oh, and most importantly. Just split off the fucking "World First Race" into a tournament server with pre-made characters and keep that shit isolated in a bubble to not interfere with the game's health.

[Compher]

Just split off the fucking "World First Race" into a tournament server with pre-made characters and keep that shit isolated in a bubble to not interfere with the game's health.[/B]

This tbh. Every time I decide I want to mythic raid again, I always get into guilds that slap heroic no problem within the first week or two and then fight the roster boss trying to consistently get 20 people together to do Mythic. Just make mythic flex and let the race to world first be a controlled environment.

[bullseyed]

This whole statement is based on fiction. In classic it was not hard to fill raids with 40 people. So the thing that makes it hard to fill up a mythic raid team is clearly not the fact that it requires 20 people. Being hard to fill is a symptom and not the cause.

"I can't get 20 people to raid with me" means people don't do free carries.

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I still think the issue isn't the 20 man roster but the fact that you can't easily get replacements due to no cross server for a long time and the way mythic lockouts work.

90-100% attendance rate that most guilds (that have a shot at CE at least) want is just not possible for me due to work and other obligations, I'm pretty sure many guilds would be more lenient if they could replace someone for an evening with the same xp more easily.

There are thousands and thousands of people on your server/server group who could fill that one spot. If you can't find one, you wouldn't find one with cross-server either. Cross server is open approximately 50% of the tier anyway.

[Linkedblade]

I give a big fck about balance, just make mythic flex.

You can lock achivements behind 20 man, or lower itemlevel by 2-3 points if u are more or less then 20, so everybody is happy

This pretty much. Let it scale to 5 players, too. That would make the raids open to the largest portion of the player base.

[Speedlance]

Dont be selfish, i like to watch world first race. Same as i lkke to watch professional soccer. Do you want professional soccer to be flex as well where 1 team is 15 and the other is 11?

[Zarvel]

Barely anyone of wows big community care much about world first race. You think they would care, but just cause you live in this bubble. I mean sure im looking into wowprogress aswell, but overall i really dont care. I dont watch streams I dont care about the people/Strategys etc.

And WoW holds back its potential, because "balance". You know, there are way more people out there who dont care about something like this, or if their class X% less damage bla bla. People just wanna play. They wanna have Fun. And if they cant have fun cause "Oh no, we are missing 3 people today, we cant go mythic!" or "You cant play this fun cov/talent, you need to switch to this unfun talent/cov so you doing more damage" its worse then who the fck getting world first or if the ranking is messed up, cause its not flex more.

With some Group sizes some bossed should be easiert, some harder. Thats it. Some People abuse this for world first?! Ok, but who the hell cares?! how does something like this affect ME? or my raidgroup/guild?! It doesnt. It doesnt affect 98% of the playerbase.

Ehm, they going thought the hardmode because they want to? because its fun for them?

You're arguing with people who are force fed ideas and narratives from their favorite streamers, and have been so for years now. They cannot think critically for themselves, and for any situation that doesn't involve them or people like them. Why bother?
The only people that the issue with raid size should be really obvious to is the dev team at blizz. Either they realize the raid size of 20 is killing guilds that want to play challenging content but just can't cuz recruitment's impossible/people just prefer playing with a smaller team but still face a challenge, Or, it stays like this and mythic participation keeps going lower and lower and lower, to a point far worse than Sepulcher's numbers, and then finally their hand will be forced.

It's just a waiting game at this point. Blizz has a habit in recent years of sitting on obvious QOL changes until people stop engaging with content entirely. That behavior is not suddenly going to change, because that's an issue with their pipeline.