WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.

[Glorious Leader]

Dude, opinions are like arseholes... Everyone has one.

Not really an opinion. It's a certainty that if you make content more difficult than less players are likely to do it. If you continue this trend less and less players are likely to do it. If that weren't true then everyone would have heroic lei shen achievements in the first week. I don't understand what's an opinion about any of that when it's actually a trend and it's a trend the developers have coped to. Theirs no opinion involved. You may not think it's difficult but you can't argue that it has increased in complexity will leave players behind (newer and weaker players). As this continues to rise you'll have more and more players left behind. That isn't an opinion, it's just obvious.

2.) Lower the difficulty of normal and heroic raiding.

If you lower the difficulty of normal modes to reduce the gap between that and LFR then you might as well lower the difficulty of heroics too for the same reason. This would be a good band-aid initially but Blizzard would inevitably lose a lot of respect from the long running normal-mode community as well as losing a lot of the heroic guild community because there would no longer be a level of respect associated with being a heroic raider. I have no evidence to support this but I'd wager the majority of Blizzard's long-term subscriptions come from the normal and heroic raiders with the ultra casuals subscribing for short periods of time between content patches. Shunning the more skilled members of the WoW community could be a risky proposition from a business PoV.

The only risky thing is telling your players they aren't good enough for normal difficulty. That is currently what the game does. It's a bad move to tell the majority of people look you get stuck in lfr and not normal because well that's normal. You people really really view yourselves in such ridiculous lights. The "respect associated with being a heroic raider". Tip. Nobody gives a fuck. Loss of respect? I mean you can say that boat sailed already but really who gives a shit. This argument is so tired. I really don't mean to be dismissive but you honestly have a really bizarre world view if you think the majority of raiders (let alone players) actually gives a flying fuck about heroic raiders. If you actually think any large chunk of the player base pays 15 bucks a month to be in awe of heroic raiders. The argument from prestige is dead. NOBODY CARES or even respects your heroic raid. You people have some weird attachments to this game...

[Lei]

Dude, opinions are like arseholes... Everyone has one.

So... With Blizzard opening up raiding to the masses they have challenges that were never there before

I am not sure how you mean "opening up raiding to the masses", I mean what stopped you in vanilla to raid (Time, I guess)? I know attunements maybe stopped you in bc (if you came too late).
Anyways, maybe Blizz should lowering the monthly fee from 15 bucks to 10, that would be the base game subscription (+ access to LFR), and maybe gather +5 bucks from raiders, that would be the requirement to step in into a normal/hc raid instance. So that again only "raiders" would raid, others would do LFR. With this, in theory EVERYONE who pays the extra 5 bucks would willing to min-maxing their characters, raiding would be separated, and "elite" once again.

I know this is a terrible idea, but heck, I do want to see where would this lead!

[Deleted]

I do have to agree with voxTree re most of his points, in particular the issues on recruitment. I've stated on other threads how hard it is to get a player now that I actually want to play with three times a week that isn't so terrible at basic things I want to log out. We had a disc priest trial that didn't use Spirit Shell on Magaera and when asked why not asked what Spirit Shell is. I'm sure other people in similar guilds would agree and have their own horror stories. Even then we've essentially bruteforced normal with a few dps who are, quite frankly, exceptional by any guild's standards carrying weaker dps (including my undergeared spriest). Most tries of any fight we are wiped to the same nonsense over and over again by the exact same players. I actually despair to think what heroic will be like. I am desperate to find somebody who can actually play!

Whilst I am not certain a flat nerf to the encounters themselves actually teaches anyone, the engagement level needs to go up because LFR is not applicable, at all, to what we raided in previous expansions when something got too hard. LFR is full of angry, sullen players who don't want to be there. You have raiders in there trying to get Secrets for their quest and are pissed off about it with the people who should be there. If you think LFR is doing what it is intended to do, ask yourself how well it would go with a full group of 480 geared players at the skill level LFR is intended for. Lei Shen in LFR alone is an absolute shitstorm.

[Deleted]

Tip. Nobody gives a fuck. Loss of respect? I mean you can say that boat sailed already but really who gives a shit. This argument is so tired. I really don't mean to be dismissive but you honestly have a really bizarre world view if you think the majority of raiders (let alone players) actually gives a flying fuck about heroic raiders. If you actually think any large chunk of the player base pays 15 bucks a month to be in awe of heroic raiders. The argument from prestige is dead. NOBODY CARES or even respects your heroic raid. You people have some weird attachments to this game...

Again dude, that's your opinion - it's not a fact, learn to recognise the difference. It's not a "weird attachment" to the game, it's an acknowledgement that some people have accomplished things that you can't/haven't and I respect that. What's strange about it? I'd argue that it's stranger to whine about not being able to do the content and that it should be nerfed but, again that's just my opinion.

I am not sure how you mean "opening up raiding to the masses", I mean what stopped you in vanilla to raid (Time, I guess)? I know attunements maybe stopped you in bc (if you came too late).
Anyways, maybe Blizz should lowering the monthly fee from 15 bucks to 10, that would be the base game subscription (+ access to LFR), and maybe gather +5 bucks from raiders, that would be the requirement to step in into a normal/hc raid instance. So that again only "raiders" would raid, others would do LFR. With this, in theory EVERYONE who pays the extra 5 bucks would willing to min-maxing their characters, raiding would be separated, and "elite" once again.

I know this is a terrible idea, but heck, I do want to see where would this lead!

Personally? Nothing stopped me in vanilla - Was clearing Naxx40. Raiding has opened up to the masses because it no longer requires a guild, skill, communication, etc. LFR is now raiding by Blizzard's definition and so all you need is a selection of easily attained gear, the ability to click "queue" and the patience to sit through an LFR.

In terms of your discounted subscription idea - Personally I'd do that, it's not a terrible idea by any means as it offers a discounted game to the masses - but that's the issue. So few people (relitively speaking) do normal and heroic modes that Blizzard would be losing money :-P

[Glorious Leader]

I do have to agree with voxTree re most of his points, in particular the issues on recruitment. I've stated on other threads how hard it is to get a player now that I actually want to play with three times a week that isn't so terrible at basic things I want to log out. We had a disc priest trial that didn't use Spirit Shell on Magaera and when asked why not asked what Spirit Shell is. I'm sure other people in similar guilds would agree and have their own horror stories. Even then we've essentially bruteforced normal with a few dps who are, quite frankly, exceptional by any guild's standards carrying weaker dps (including my undergeared spriest). Most tries of any fight we are wiped to the same nonsense over and over again by the exact same players. I actually despair to think what heroic will be like. I am desperate to find somebody who can actually play!

Whilst I am not certain a flat nerf to the encounters themselves actually teaches anyone, the engagement level needs to go up because LFR is not applicable, at all, to what we raided in previous expansions when something got too hard. LFR is full of angry, sullen players who don't want to be there. You have raiders in there trying to get Secrets for their quest and are pissed off about it with the people who should be there. If you think LFR is doing what it is intended to do, ask yourself how well it would go with a full group of 480 geared players at the skill level LFR is intended for. Lei Shen in LFR alone is an absolute shitstorm.

It goes hand in hand. Recruitment is terrible because the raid is to hard. If you want recruitment to be better lower the difficulty then all of a sudden you'll find SO MANY suitable and recruit-able players. A virtual army of them waiting...

---------- Post added 2013-05-31 at 09:40 AM ----------

Again dude, that's your opinion - it's not a fact, learn to recognise the difference. It's not a "weird attachment" to the game, it's an acknowledgement that some people have accomplished things that you can't/haven't and I respect that. What's strange about it? I'd argue that it's stranger to whine about not being able to do the content and that it should be nerfed but, again that's just my opinion.

Yes that's my opinion and a correct one. What you quoted initially was not an opinion, it was an obvious fact. It is indeed a weird attachement to the game that you would genuinely and actively seek or desire or consider the "respect" of total random fucking strangers for some virtual accomplishment that you achieved when by and large those players you seek/desire/consider "respect" from don't really give a flying fuck.

It is not stranger to "whine" about disatisfaction with a product or service. People do it all the time.

[threads]

My problem with the current model is that LFR doesn't engage players enough to make them get better. Newer players are clueless when they walk into a normal raid where mechanics and class knowledge matters, and they get booted. If you want new players to gradually progress then difficulty in lfr has to go up, or normal has to come down. Heroic guilds are already starting to fall apart because of lack of recruits.

[Deleted]

At first, I want to thank OP for the first constructive post on the raid difficulty dilemma (at least the first one that I've come accross).

Most persons in here seem to agree with the problematics, OP has stated - ofc I ignore the usual 'even heroic mode is too easy' posts inbetween.

Some core points I hope we can consider valid:

- a minimum of knowledge of your class can be expected from people willing to raid normals (I've seen unnecessary arguments out of misinterpreting each other's
posts in this threads)

- WotLK can be considered the peak of WoW UP TO NOW - due to lore but also due to 'puggability of normals (not including the endbosses like Yogg)' and 25 heroics
catering the guilds who wanted more than that

- LFR is not to blame for the decline of 10man normal raiding/pugging - the developers are, thinking they can serve both fractions by:

1. relatively hard Normal Modes and even more so Heroic Modes for the 'Hardcore Raiders'

2. LFR for the so called 'Casuals', aka a very big percentage of the endgame player base.

-> This just doesn't work out, as we are experiencing right now - some 'Casuals' are fully satisfied by doing LFR, but many are missing real raiding,
even if they only can play moderate Normal modes.


Tl;dr.: MoP raiding is hard raiding, endgame trying to be covered as casual friendly since they gave us LFR.

[Lei]

My problem with the current model is that LFR doesn't engage players enough to make them get better. Newer players are clueless when they walk into a normal raid where mechanics and class knowledge matters, and they get booted. If you want new players to gradually progress then difficulty in lfr has to go up, or normal has to come down. Heroic guilds are already starting to fall apart because of lack of recruits.

Newer players would be even more clueless without LFR, don't you think?

[Deleted]

Actually no their were mods in vanilla. We used CTRA and Decursive although it was probably less necessary back then then it is now. Boses were also piss easy in vanilla. Baron Geddon was a joke then he's a joke now.

Again I'm sorry you are attempting to apply some moral world view into a video game. This is a video game it's not like the real world in any sense. Blizzard could tmmrw make every raid boss a single player solo mob and they have exactly the power to do that. Nothing has to be like anything. Except in so far as you apply a narrow morality and world view onto the issue. Again I'm pretty sure you'd think it was a horrible thing if everyone could raid normals because they were so easy when clearly it is an obvious desideratum. Or at least it should be until you apply a moral and world view about your work ethic in real life and then bizarrely to apply that to a video game. Wether inadvertently or not you have colored the discussion with your general ideas and opinions about the real world when it wasn't necessary to do.

Calling them lazy is a moral judgement. Yes I know you have your beliefs about what people can and can't do but that also is ironically just a reflection about your view on morality and your view on life and the world in general. Yes everyone can be a millionaire except clearly not.

It's a game yes, but so is soccer and all the other sports you have to play for, when you want to learn. So if you want to keep going on about my "moral world view", then lets apply this to "the real world". Should everyone everywhere lower the standards, so everyone can get to experience the same thing at the same level? Then I want a doctors degree. I'm paying for it, so why shouldn't I get one, without having to study for years? Why can't I make the best soccer team in the world, when I pay my local soccer club a quarterly fee?

This game is a business and you don't pay to get everything handed to you. You pay to gain access to their servers, to their game. How and what you do in the game and how much you want out of it, is up to you.

You said a few pages back, that you just got to Normal Lei Shen and are yet to progress on it. At the same time you said, that you didn't want or need my help (I never actually offered it lol). That's the sort of mentality that's the reason you still haven't cleared ToT Normal. You come here complaining thread after thread, page after page about difficulty, when you and everyone else could just ask for advice/help and there would be plenty of people to help you.

But here's what I don't get. If you don't personally think Normal Horridon was too difficult, why did you complain about it page after page? If you don't personally think ToT Normal is too difficult, why are you here again complaining? Are you complaining on other peoples behalf?

If you personally think it's too hard, why then don't you ask for help? Clearly you're aware of a site like MMO, I could understand if you didn't know about any forum related to WoW. But you do know, so maybe you should spend less time complaining and more time researching.

Unless you belong to the top guilds, there's always a reason to ask for help, when you're stuck. And there's nothing wrong in doing it. I have so much more respect for the casual raider who posts a log from Normal Megaera and asks for help. Despite the fact that people tell him, that his raid groups really needs to shape up, he do gets help. That's the difference between a player who wants to improve and someone who just complains, whenever something seems a bit hard.

[Deleted]

Newer players would be even more clueless without LFR, don't you think?

Yes but they wouldn't have such an easy "baseline" difficulty to compare it to.

[Kesandri]

It's all pretty simple to me, introducing LFR was always going to cause a decline in the amount of guilds running normal raids. Raiding used to be seen as the endgame for a large chunk of players, even those casual ones, and now they have an 'alternate' way to view that endgame content which is much quicker to accomplish they will obviously take it.
Is this a bad thing? being really honest I am not sure, it did allow players to play when they want rather at the schedule of others however it does seem a waste that some awesome raid work like tot (imo) will never be as epic as it once was due to how easy it is to see it now.
There will always be arguements for and against on this subject but keep down for me personally, I do wonder if blizzard slightly regret adding it now, as LFR imo is the main reason why players resub for a patch and then unsub till the following patch.

[Glorious Leader]

This game is a business

About the only quotable thing you said in that entire post. This game is a business and vanity development that costs the developers lots of money for less bang for their buck will have to go out the window especially if theirs any hint (and theirs a pretty strong one) that it will reduce the bleed of subs. My signature says it all.

[Deleted]

Good thread, but I honestly couldn't care less if people feel like content is too hard for them. Learn to play the game or just realize it's not for you and get the hell out. No need to whine about the difficulty when it's perfectly fine for so many people.

[Glorious Leader]

Good thread, but I honestly couldn't care less if people feel like content is too hard for them. Learn to play the game or just realize it's not for you and get the hell out. No need to whine about the difficulty when it's perfectly fine for so many people.

That's exactly what they did. They got the hell out. Now why anyone thinks this is a good thing is beyond me but if you do just know that it's not a sustainable position in the long run.

[Deleted]

But Glorious Leader, if you lower the normal difficulty straight off to get more players in, how will the players I recruit be able to handle heroics, which is what my guild wants to do, and are far more unforgiving mechanically? I don't want to have to teach a raider to raid, although I've never been unwilling if I think they really want to learn from me. I do get your meaning, but that is the main fear probably for myself and the other guys in here. It may just mean that the graph only starts getting smaller for heroics but it might still trap a lot of guilds in the cycle of only being able to do normals. Without some kind of training content, how do players first of all know they are ready for a raiding guild and then later know they are ready for the step up to a guild raiding heroics? 25 man used to be where you'd go when you I suppose "outgrew" your 10 man in WOTLK. It's this main reason that I feel the loss of 25 mans most keenly - certainly I've not raided even a 25 man pug since the launch of Cata. In classic/TBC you just kind of went to a different guild (or were poached by one) when you were ready to raid tier 6 or Sunwell, the redundancy of tiers now is a terrible thing for me.

I'm probably deviating from Zell's points here of course for which I'll get scolded, but this tiny pool of raiders is only getting smaller.

[Glorious Leader]

But Glorious Leader, if you lower the normal difficulty straight off to get more players in, how will the players I recruit be able to handle heroics, which is what my guild wants to do, and are far more unforgiving mechanically? I don't want to have to teach a raider to raid, although I've never been unwilling if I think they really want to learn from me. I do get your meaning, but that is the main fear probably for myself and the other guys in here. It may just mean that the graph only starts getting smaller for heroics but it might still trap a lot of guilds in the cycle of only being able to do normals. Without some kind of training content, how do players first of all know they are ready for a raiding guild and then later know they are ready for the step up to a guild raiding heroics? 25 man used to be where you'd go when you I suppose "outgrew" your 10 man in WOTLK. It's this main reason that I feel the loss of 25 mans most keenly - certainly I've not raided even a 25 man pug since the launch of Cata. In classic/TBC you just kind of went to a different guild (or were poached by one) when you were ready to raid tier 6 or Sunwell, the redundancy of tiers now is a terrible thing for me.

I'm probably deviating from Zell's points here of course for which I'll get scolded, but this tiny pool of raiders is only getting smaller.

First of all I'm all in favor of nerfing heroics to but that's really neither here not there. You don't want to teach them? well how then do you expect them to get better? I agree the game does a piss poor job of teaching them but to be honest at some point their gonna need some hands on guidance no matter how many systems the developers input in the game.

The tiny pool of raiders is only getting smaller and you want to make it smaller by keeping difficulty at this level? I don't get it. Honest.

In the end theirs gonna have to be an admission from hardcore raiders than their lust and desire for ever increasing difficulty is harmful and damaging to the raiding community and is in the end probably harmful to themselves. I doubt we will ever get such an admission but it's really irellevant in the long run I guess. Changes will be made. Let's see what they do.

[Lei]

Yes but they wouldn't have such an easy "baseline" difficulty to compare it to.

It must be me, but I fail to see any logic in this. Let's say I am doing LFR, and I am interested in raiding. I apply to a "social raiding" guild. I am on trial, we go to raid, either I pre-read the tacts, or don't, and either I fail miserably or I don't. If I fail, either I get told to step up, or they just give me time and tell me what am I doing wrong.
BUT. At the end I either step up and decide to continue like that, or I throw the idea to raid and I go back to LFR.
Now how "easy baseline difficulty" comes into this picture? Oo
Trials were always trials, they either failed or succeeded. They were rejected or accepted. LFR has nothing to do with this, in fact, I think it gives more "raw material" to social guilds than they would get without it.

[Deleted]

It is indeed a weird attachement to the game that you would genuinely and actively seek or desire or consider the "respect" of total random fucking strangers for some virtual accomplishment that you achieved when by and large those players you seek/desire/consider "respect" from don't really give a flying fuck.

It is not stranger to "whine" about disatisfaction with a product or service. People do it all the time.

Accomplishment within a virtual world is still an accomplishment, it might not be on the same level as winning the world cup, climbing Everest, becoming a golf master, writing a critically acclaimed novel, directing a masterpiece of cinema or even raising a family but if you dedicate your free time to becoming as good as possible at something (along with a group of likeminded individuals) - even if that something is WoW then why is it strange that some people have respect for those in game achievements? You can argue that "that ship has sailed" but if that were the case then the "world first" threads on these very forums wouldn't be thousands of pages long. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some elitist and nowadays I'm fairly casual - that doesn't mean I don't have a bit of respect for the people who push themselves harder than I do to achieve.

And yes, you can whine about disatisfaction with a product or service - if my mobile phone wasn't working then I'd complain... If I were too ignorant/stubborn/lazy to learn how to use said mobile device then yes, it's a bit strange in my eyes.

It must be me, but I fail to see any logic in this. Let's say I am doing LFR, and I am interested in raiding. I apply to a "social raiding" guild. I am on trial, we go to raid, either I pre-read the tacts, or don't, and either I fail miserably or I don't. If I fail, either I get told to step up, or they just give me time and tell me what am I doing wrong.
BUT. At the end I either step up and decide to continue like that, or I throw the idea to raid and I go back to LFR.
Now how "easy baseline difficulty" comes into this picture? Oo
Trials were always trials, they either failed or succeeded. They were rejected or accepted. LFR has nothing to do with this, in fact, I think it gives more "raw material" to social guilds than they would get without it.

The logic is there, and I see your point... But you're assuming that this hypothetical person who has applied to raid is just going to do wonderfully or fail. My point comes in when that person has failed and then, annoyed, rants on forums/twitter etc that normal raiding is too hard because the previous "raiding" experience that he's used to is LFR and it's not really comparable.

[Deleted]

About the only quotable thing you said in that entire post. This game is a business and vanity development that costs the developers lots of money for less bang for their buck will have to go out the window especially if theirs any hint (and theirs a pretty strong one) that it will reduce the bleed of subs. My signature says it all.

lol so you don't want to answer, do you? You snip out most of my post, yet you chose to quote the only thing that fits into your argumentation.

I'll ask you again then - why don't you ask for help in stead of spending all this time QQ'ing about the difficulty?

It's such a waste of time arguing with someone as you. You don't care to actually engage in a proper discussion, you keep insisting that your way is the only way and clearly you're so pro that if you wanted, you could get accepted to Method - Jk!

L2P, ask for help or be stuck in Normal ToT and QQ about it. Not wasting anymore time on you, you have yet again managed to hijack a thread with all your QQ'ing.

[Deleted]

That's a very interesting read, basically from what I can see its showing why blizzard needs to make the game easier because the majority of it's player base just aren't good enough.... which is sad... I love Throne of Thunder, amazing bosses.. great difficulty in both normal and heroic and its FUN.