Shadowlands Season 4 - Defeat Weekly Fated Raids for Higher Item Level Loot

[Adam552]

can we not play them without the Fated affix, like we can do currently?

[schwarzkopf]

Wonderful, more content that I don't have access to.

Tonight I work out when there will be stuff to do in WoW again - a year most likely.

[MrLachyG]

Wonderful, more content that I don't have access to.

Tonight I work out when there will be stuff to do in WoW again - a year most likely.

it's available to everyone. there is a LFR mode

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can we not play them without the Fated affix, like we can do currently?

I think you can, that is why it is on rotation. so you might not be able to do it every week.

[Rafalga]

They are trying i will give'em that.

[Aydinx2]

there should be an opt-in/out for it.
hurts no one, helps everyone.

imagine coming back, wanting to progress on your own with your guild (the whole " i will come back when everything is released" thing) and now progression is harder every 3 weeks with no options out.
same with lfr, it is already a wipefest with the wrong groups, good luck with affixes, unless they massively undertune them in lfr.

If any guild is still struggling on Normal/Heroic in any of the raids when this releases they probably shouldn't be raiding to begin with. And they should be able to compensate for a player who joins for the first time. If a whole raid group doesn't start with the content until the last patch then that's on them.

And let's not forget: this makes 2 other raids relevant again, meaning there is actually more content than ever to get gear from.

LFR I can understand since that tends to have new characters (and some who need set).

[Pregnant Orc]

there should be an opt-in/out for it.
hurts no one, helps everyone.

Sure. Make an opt-out at the start of the dungeon similar to how we could turn of the ICC buff at the end of WotLK. That'll keep it away from the bosses but available at the start of the run for guilds. It will hurt nobody and likely be used by even fewer but the option does not hurt. There might still be some guild who want to do late progress in Sepulcher heroics or mythics though I think they'd rather take the event even on a difficulty level lower for the boosted rewards and progress the week after.

What the opt-out/in can't be is available in LFR and it has to verify that every player in the instance or who enters wants to opt for it so there can be no trolling by locking people out of the affix version.

All in all I think an opt out would be little more than a gesture that they at least considered it but that isn't necessarily a bad thing

[Xarion]

As a casual normal-sometimes heroic raider, I am more than happy for the content recycling.
I remember we did it in MoP and WotLK and let's be honest, Blizzard does great raids. CastleVania (sorry, simply cannot help myself :P) is an awesome place with interesting mechanics, so it would be great to re-visit it from time to time.

[Niwes]

affixes asside: not a step in the wrong direction per se. i like the general idea, to keep all tiers in an xpac relevant. never got why they did that „play a raid for 3-6 months and then throw it away“ for 17 years, tbh. everything that helps making all tiers of an xpac stay relevant the whole xpac, is welcome. imo.

[Tiwack]

Affixes without timers but on bosses with berserk mechanics? Preposterous !!

[Niwes]

Why make new stuff when you can just recycle old content and call it new

if they would move to a 2 raid tier xpac, with this system, i totally agree. even 3 feels to low to me. 4 raid tiers in a 2year running xpac is perfect.

but if you can play all 4 raid tiers, the whole lifetime while xpac is running, by dropping relevant gear, would be a super nice change imo. imagine you played WotLK in Icecrown, while Ulduar had dropped still relevant gear. or you had done still Nighthold or Tomb, while doing Antorus, in Legion.

i way more prefer the ability to run 3-4 different HC raids in prarallel, than running the actual tier in 3 difficulties again and again and again, in the hope for a tiny upgrade.

i personally like that change, if it not leads to less raids per xpac.

and to ppls arguing, that the story flow is confusing when i.e. Nathria is still actual content, while story moved on to Sanctum: i say since 10+ years it was a fail design to tell story in raids, in the first place. they should tell story per quests and open world, not in raids. raids should be the story‘s sidecar not the story‘s driver.

i would love to see xpacs, keeping all raid tiers relevant the whole xpacs lifetime, while telling the xpacs story outside of raids, in quests and open world scenarios and stuff. would be very welcome to me.

[cigawoot]

It's a step in the right direction, although the way it's being implemented still feels a bit arduous or convoluted as described. Could write it off as this wasn't planned at all, and it's a stop-gap measure instead of a well thought-out system. Potentially another good idea, bad execution (or just missing the mark) in the making.

Ultimately, the real trick is getting people to actually want to go back into old raids, even with the added affix mechanics and gear upgrades. Unless the numbers shown are the actual numbers (which I highly doubt), players tend to be very split on kiss/curse mechanics. I'd hazard a guess that the people who would be likely to engage in this system would be people who wouldn't have left the game anyways, so as a retention mechanic it's probably going to have a negligible effect. You're still fighting against all the other issues in WoW that either turn off or discourage people from engaging in raiding, as well as already being done with old raids if you had already spent a ton of time progressing/reclearing them. If anything, I'd guess you'll see pug groups doing this content, not really progression guilds (similar to timewalking raids).

We really don't know how the whole system works yet, or how it actually plays. Everything we know is either indirect observation of UI elements in the PTR or data mining.

[Niwes]

it's available to everyone. there is a LFR mode

not get his statement too. foremost: after this change he has access to 3 different LFR raids instead of 1.

not get it…

[schwarzkopf]

it's available to everyone

It is not. Hope that helps.

[MrLachyG]

It is not. Hope that helps.

how is it not?

[Raidoser]

it's available to everyone. there is a LFR mode.

Didn't read that, are you sure ? because doing LFR is already a nightmare now with watered down mechanics so i can't imagine doing it with an added affix, would beat takeshi's castle in frustration hand down.

[schwarzkopf]

how is it not?

I already answered that - because I don't have access to it. Going into more details will drag this so far off topic that I'd get nabbed.

[ONCHEhap]

I already answered that - because I don't have access to it. Going into more details will drag this so far off topic that I'd get nabbed.

You have access to it. You just chose not to do it.

The game isn't to blame for that

[Eapoe]

Seems like a win to me. I’m personally not happy about doing old content over and over, and the implications it could have.
Personal topics:
Biggest con is the worry that just 3-4 raids will release when an xpac comes out and then just cycling which one(s) give highest ilvl for a given week over the course of the xpac. There’s also a worry as to how tier sets will be affected. Will we get a new set every raid release, or will we just get 1 set over an entire xpac that just upgrades in ilvl from cycle to cycle?
Biggest pro is that after getting a raid to farm status there is incentive to keep playing and getting gear upgrades.

That stated, I know plenty of people thru the years have discussed wanting old content to stay relevant thru an xpac, and this gives them that. It also seem to be a plus in FF14 that players like to bring up during debates that the content is always there, and even older xpac content is still relevant at max level.

[Lurker1]

You have access to it. You just chose not to do it.

The game isn't to blame for that

Nah hes right.

[Pratt]

Just so I'm not missing something... So the only "new" content we're getting between now and November is "go back and do the old raids again"?