the reason normal is hard for most people.

[khalltusk]

so, your supposed "very nice friends" speak for the entire 6.2 million players. got it. thanks for correcting my judgment.


anyways, i hate these types of threads. all the wanna-be hardcore raiders come out of the wood works with their fallacy arguments, to cry about how other people game play sooooooooooooooooooooo effects theirs.


i'm out.

Stay out thanks, you wanted "word of mouth" statistics I provided you with your oh so wanted anecdotal evidences (which is crap btw its a reason why its ignored. Thats why you used actual data to show what bosses have died by x amount of players. Thats evidence anything else is hear say.

So you think anyone else is a wanna-be hardcore raider with their silly arguments. Check out my armoury and you can see when I did hardcore raiding. Probably more than you've ever done.

If you can't enter a debate reasonably you should stay out of it.

[Deathgoose]

i'm wallowing in what denial? that you're using wowprogress to confirm that this is, in fact, word of mouth statistics that normals are too hard? most of those guilds could be social guilds, with zero commitment for raiding what-so-ever. so, it could very well be, biased statistics.

i'm taking a guess you're another wanna-be hardcore raider rolling on that soapbox of yours?

I'm a casual that hasn't done anything beyond LFR since LFR was first introduced in DS, and I agree with Osmeric, so not sure what relevence the soapbox zinger was supposed to be. If anything, the wanna-be hardcore raider is going to preach that the raids are fine, people need to just get better, because to say anything else would be to admit that they, themselves, aren't as good as they think they are.

And no shit the statistics are biased with beer-league and social guilds that give normals a try for the lulz and don't get very far. But doesn't that also serve to prove that if normals were so easy, then even scrub guilds that had no business doing them would be progressing, if not clearing, them?

[Conzar]

All: Minus Valour Points for dying to avoidable mechanics (standing in fire/Durumu's maze)?
Tanks: Minus Valour Points for letting the other tanks' stacks of debuff get too high.
DPS: Valour Point adjustments for position on the damage meters (top third get extra points, mid third get no extra, bottom third get fewer points).

Don't know how you can encourage better play for healers, as the variety of healing is so wide (pure HPS isn't accurate measure of a great healer, but is an indication of someone who might be a great healer). Penalize depending on over-healing outside of a percentage margin maybe?

[Lylandra]

No. No. No. It is not. Normal is harder than ever since NM/HM was split into two. Even harder than Vanilla and most of TBC.

I'm a better player now than I've ever been in the past and I still get the feel that NMs (in appropriate gear, not ridiculously OP/upped/HM gear) are much harder than anything I've encountered so far. It has *nothing* to do with "LFRLOL" players, though Blizz was able to make NMs harder, now that they didn't have to fear a loss of "average people" who want to raid as well ("ooooh NM is too hard? Just go to LFR!").

However, you could easily drag average players (not "average raiders", those are the okay to good players) along in your group back when we only had NM or NM/HM. Nowadays it is impossible. At least during progress.

Flex will help with that. Just name Flex "normal" and Ex-normal "experienced" or "veteran". Because today's NMs are for seasoned players only.

[Robert3620]

Progress tracking, specifically wowprogress.com. It shows that only a small fraction of WoW players (in NA/EU) down any normal boss, and of those that do, only a minority have been clearing MoP normal mode raids during the relevant tier (although ToT normal is getting close to 50% now.)

The stats back in Wrath showed that even those raids (Ulduar, ICC) were too difficult for most attempting them. Only 20% of ICC 25 raid guilds managed to down LK 25 on normal mode, even with the 30% player buff.

Just like to point out the reason you are seeing the rate of clearing your seeing this tier is due to the large amount of guilds that didn't even attempt to raid this tier. About 20k less killed the first boss in ToT then Stone Guard.

[HeedmySpeed]

So, instead of objective statistics that show how people really behave, you want statements from people who are going to be reluctant to admit they aren't good enough?

Yeah, you're being totally honest in your demand. Not.

Data can be misinterpreted.
I wouldn't substitute it for "word of mouth" either however because it's been proven time and again that people don't know what they truly want or what's good for them.

[khalltusk]

All: Minus Valour Points for dying to avoidable mechanics (standing in fire/Durumu's maze)?
Tanks: Minus Valour Points for letting the other tanks' stacks of debuff get too high.
DPS: Valour Point adjustments for position on the damage meters (top third get extra points, mid third get no extra, bottom third get fewer points).

Don't know how you can encourage better play for healers, as the variety of healing is so wide (pure HPS isn't accurate measure of a great healer, but is an indication of someone who might be a great healer). Penalize depending on over-healing outside of a percentage margin maybe?

On the flip side what if tank 1 is dead and the other tanks debuffs get too high would it still count? :P

[RickJamesLich]

I think OP is spot on here, the problem is the LFR actually makes people worse at raiding than as if there wasn't LFR.... questing and 5 mans same thing... when you can get from 1 to 90 without ever forming a group, you don't learn any tools about working as a team.

[Deathgoose]

I think OP is spot on here, the problem is the LFR actually makes people worse at raiding than as if there wasn't LFR.... questing and 5 mans same thing... when you can get from 1 to 90 without ever forming a group, you don't learn any tools about working as a team.

And without LFR, many people would never raid. And not raiding at all will make you *really* bad at raiding.

[GrieverXIII]

Tbh, normal is just pointlessly overtuned (coming from someone who killed Ra'den realm first) for the average crowd. Not everyone can dedicate entire nights of wipes to learn a boss on what is suposed to be an easy setting, specially when you have LFR that can be cleared by anyone with a pulse within 2 hours. And yes, its a fact that a large amount of people suck at video games, just like a lot of people suck at sports, or music, or whatever other hobby that requires talents and practice, thats why there's need to be easier difficulties. I'd much prefer seeing normals being tuned as ToGC, ICC 20%+ or DS 15%+ if it removed the need for LFR.

[gamingmuscle]

slippery slope.

- - - Updated - - -



another slippery slope.

How?


You can't ignore the fact that normal progression is pretty much a linear chain of events...where killing Boss Z depends on killing A -> Y. If you were to remove this dependency then MAYBE guilds could progress farther by skipping "hard" content for them and killing the "easy" content up and untill they either recruit or gear their way out of the "hard" content being hard. But that's not how normals work.

[Tripz]

How can people blame the player? I was never able to clear ToC or ICC (back when I did raid) with my guild, not because I'm bad but because my guild itself wasn't prepared, even coordinated.

[theturn]

Deciding that 10m and 25m should drop the same ilvl and should be the same difficulty. Why was this horrible and a mistake that costed them dearly through the rest of Cataclysm? Because 10m pugging -was- the content for their mainstream playerbase, the content that LFR offers right now. 10m was the easymode version of 25m raiding, and 25m normal mode raiding was already pretty forgiving content. But cataclysm wiped all that straight off the table.

This was a mistake, but one they could no longer revert because it would piss off all the guilds that disbanded to go from a 25m guild to a 10m guild instead. This is why I consider LFR a band-aid fix for a problem they created previously.

Stopped reading here. Their were fights in wrath where 10 man was harder than 25 man. The only reason 10 man was labeled easier than 25 man was because 25 man guilds would do 10 man modes on top of 25 mans. Since they over-geared it they labeled it "easy". Truth was/is that 10 man guilds are MUCH MUCH easier to keep together so people swapped to 10 mans and were upset over the gear difference.

I personally would be happy to see LFR go away but if we are going to talk about the past lets talk about it without the selective memory.

[Deleted]

No. No. No. It is not. Normal is harder than ever since NM/HM was split into two. Even harder than Vanilla and most of TBC.

I'm a better player now than I've ever been in the past and I still get the feel that NMs (in appropriate gear, not ridiculously OP/upped/HM gear) are much harder than anything I've encountered so far. It has *nothing* to do with "LFRLOL" players, though Blizz was able to make NMs harder, now that they didn't have to fear a loss of "average people" who want to raid as well ("ooooh NM is too hard? Just go to LFR!").

However, you could easily drag average players (not "average raiders", those are the okay to good players) along in your group back when we only had NM or NM/HM. Nowadays it is impossible. At least during progress.

Flex will help with that. Just name Flex "normal" and Ex-normal "experienced" or "veteran". Because today's NMs are for seasoned players only.

Totally agree with this, and this is coming from someone who used to raid on quite high level all the way from tier 1 to 11. Normal modes right now are much harder than I thought they were in the past, and the semi-casual raid group I'm in right now has players that have been playing for a long time as well and they agree with me on this. It took us quite a bit longer to clear normal mode ToT than I honestly expected.

[theturn]

.


You should't have 1 shot-kill mechanics in "Normal dificulty". Also you should't have mechanics where 1 player can wipe the whole raid. (hello Garalon) Is just bad gamedesign.


I know, every chain have the strenght of it's weakest link but ...
Most of the normal guilds usualy have few good players and few friends and family casuals to fill their ranks .

Is not good for the game to force them to either drop the friends or enjoy endless wipes. The results will be just guild disbands .

I really can't see any advantage for the good of the game having 80% of the normal guilds stucked for months at Garalon or Horridon .

They won't learn to play better , it's a reality . They will just /guilddisband , quit the game , or stop raiding. It's a game , people play a game to relax, and forget about the sht they got in real life , they simply won't accept it in their game too .

This is really an excellent post. One shot mechanics (one person and entire groups) have gotten out of control this expansion.

[wych]

Catering to people who play your game and make you money is bad game design?

If people REALLY wanted to be playing the higher difficulties and all of the fun, sense of accomplishment and frustration that comes along with it they would do so, in Normal or Hard mode. LFR existing doesn't specifically exclude people from doing the higher difficulties. The fact that people aren't doing those higher difficulties just proves that they don't really want to be doing those difficulties.

LFR is doing exactly what Blizzard designed it to do. One, to "cater" to the people that really just care about seeing the content. Two, retaining those players who don't care about progressions and "raiding," and by extension making them more money.

It's not just this happening though.

LFR is being used as a mechanic to gear up, and it is pretty much required if you want to join a ToT guild.

As somebody who quit for most of Cata and MoP in order to catch up I had to spam LFRs.

So I couldn't just do normal or heroics because i'd either have to find a ridiculous amount of PuGs that'd do previous content and heroics, or spam LFR until I got the gear.

LFR should be for seeing the content they don't normally see, not for getting raid ready gear.

And LFR has had ZERO effect on subs overall, if anything the loss of subs has increased since it came into action.

WoW had it's most subs when these "casual majority" weren't apparently catered for, i.e TBC, WOTLK.

Why? Because they had something to aim for.

They'd try and form guilds, do Kara, Gruul etc... Some would fail some would pass, but they had something to aim for.

They might not have seen every boss in the expansion but they had fun and they kept playing with a clear goal in mind.

[khalltusk]

It's not just this happening though.

LFR is being used as a mechanic to gear up, and it is pretty much required if you want to join a ToT guild.

As somebody who quit for most of Cata and MoP in order to catch up I had to spam LFRs.

So I couldn't just do normal or heroics because i'd either have to find a ridiculous amount of PuGs that'd do previous content and heroics, or spam LFR until I got the gear.

LFR should be for seeing the content they don't normally see, not for getting raid ready gear.

And LFR has had ZERO effect on subs overall, if anything the loss of subs has increased since it came into action.

WoW had it's most subs when these "casual majority" weren't apparently catered for, i.e TBC, WOTLK.

Why? Because they had something to aim for.

They'd try and form guilds, do Kara, Gruul etc... Some would fail some would pass, but they had something to aim for.

They might not have seen every boss in the expansion but they had fun and they kept playing with a clear goal in mind.

Sorry but Wrath was when casuals were massively catered for. It really was. Even TBC at the end was made a lot more casual friendly with removal of attunements making last bosses of t5 instances open with out having to kill the previous bosses in t5 content. Badge gear introduced etc. Wrath went even further with bad gear and providing 10/25 raid sizes.

[wych]

Sorry but Wrath was when casuals were massively catered for. It really was. Even TBC at the end was made a lot more casual friendly with removal of attunements making last bosses of t5 instances open with out having to kill the previous bosses in t5 content. Badge gear introduced etc. Wrath went even further with bad gear and providing 10/25 raid sizes.

I'll agree they were more catered for in WOTLK but nowhere near the level of today. The one thing i've never really agreed with is the catch up mechanics that began in Wrath where players just skip all the old content. However, whilst some of the 10 man content was PuGable a lot of it still required a guild, on my server at least.

TBC it was at the end of the expansion when Blizzard just wanted to rush players through.

[zenyatta]

how about they remove LFR and flex , and let people know that if u want to raid , U LEARN how to play , just like if u want to pvp , U LEARN how to play ? isnt that a better game design than this ?

What if I know how to play, but like the flexibility of doing it at whatever time I want to? If I do that sans LFR, I'm in trade "lfm need 2 tanks pst" I did that through BC and through Wrath, until LFD was implemented (and then, it only applied to 5 mans). Guess what? That was a lousy game design too.

[khalltusk]

I'll agree they were more catered for in WOTLK but nowhere near the level of today. The one thing i've never really agreed with is the catch up mechanics that began in Wrath where players just skip all the old content. However, whilst some of the 10 man content was PuGable a lot of it still required a guild, on my server at least.

TBC it was at the end of the expansion when Blizzard just wanted to rush players through.

Its a double edged sword.

I like that in LFR at the start you had to do it in Order MSV - HOF - TOES. ToT just required Ilevel I think to enter in LFR?

Normal mode raiding when it is current requires you to pretty much progress in the same manner as always. A simple way of doing it would be have account wide achievements like we do now and if you kill the last boss of the previous tier you can skip any tiers you want on any alt of yours so long as it is geared up.

New players could still go through the content at least once to get the achievement and then do any of the new content assuming they have the required gear.