f13.net

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/sports/othersports/28vide.html?ex=1296104400&en=42c55c3188d54208&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

No Tigole, we just would like to experience some fucking content without having to get into uberguilds and iron-clad raiding shedules and other stupid shit like that.

Bah.

As much as I hate Tigole for making WoW so damned Raidy I have to call you on that quote. It's not Tigole you're quoting it's the writer. Heck, Tigole even admits that they'll be adding more casual friendly level 60 dungeons into the mix with the expansion. Also, casual friendly sets of armor? Hell yes. Of course they'll pale in comparison to some of the shit you get in BWL, AQ and all the other big name places, but that's expected whether you like it or not.

I misread that then. Shit. Respect for Tigole +1, respect for writer -10 then.

I'm not exactly sure why a 5-10 man instance with nearly 40-manner equivalent loot would be a "handout", considering you still need to you know...complete the instance and win your respective rolls.

It's not a handout. Their idea of an epic loot program for lower level instances is like the Foror's book for the epic sword out of DM, and the epic armor quest out of UBRS. They'll make you run them a thousand times before you ever get one as opposed to running a 40 man 10 times to get some loot.

Blizzard is cruel like that.

If you could get the same level of gear from an instance that took between 1/4 and 1/8 the number of people and it took as much time to complete as the 40 person raid content, you would get that gear 4 to 8 times as quickly due to the reduced competition on rolls, which would in turn mean the devs would need to make that much more content.

How many people here would be interested in 40 person raid content if they could get the same spoils in a much smaller group that would likely contain a higher proportion of agreeable personailities? There's probably somebody, but then there's apparently people who get off on having their genitals tortured with woodworking tools too.

Then there's the hangers on. If you've raided in WoW you know them. People who come along for a free ride, and who AFK, auto-attack, and macro their way through raids whenever they feel they can get away with it. Minimal participation for maximum gain. They'll be the ones keen on sticking with raid content if there's a smaller group alternative, because they're too busy in real life to pay attention to the game - they just want the rewards. So if you do get your jollies from raid content for some reason, they'll be the only people you'll be able to raid with.

In summary, you wont get good small group content in WoW ever because Blizzard can't even code quick enough to satisfy the hardcore raiders. Raids are ways of diluting content so that you need to repeat the content much more often to get the desired results. Undermine them, and you have to work exponentially harder to satisfy the hardcore gamers, and Blizzard show no signs of doing that.

Much rather do a five man. Thats 35 less people to deal with.

This is a touchy design choice.

Once you've put 40 man raids in, you've effectively fucked your entire game. Your best gear and loot simply HAS to come from raids where maybe 5-10% of the people actually leave with anything. You can't put in a 10 man raid and expect people to do the 40 man raid anymore. Basically, Blizzard fucked themselves from the getgo with Onyxia. It's only downhill from here. For the the players that is - Blizzard execs are still diving through their coin banks McDuck style.

Actually compared to EQ, WoW's direct ancestor, a 40 person raid is quite small (it was 72 there).

Large raids do have some advantages. They're a remarkably efficient multiplier of content because
even with a steady stream of shinies it takes a good many runs to gear up everyone. In a 5 man group
you get loot rotting very quickly. It also allows for guild activities and the formation of decent size guilds.
In the 5 man equivalent the ideal guild size would be... 5 people. It's also more tolerant of class
distributions and attendance. Split your guild into 5 person groups and you have to have almost perfect
class balance / attendance for it to work.

Frankly the idea of launching a MMORPG without raid content (/laugh at DDO) would be the design
fault.

NO. You didn't misread ANYTHING. Because what Tigole says is EVEN WORST:
Btw, guess who says the same things? Brad McQuaid:

I want someone to go up to Brad, mash him on the forehead with a ball-pein hammer and scream 'It's a FUCKING GAME YOU RETARD'.

If it's NOT time in allotments and at a frequency that works with the rest of their lives, then what the fuck is it ?  A fucking addiction, you cunt-whore.  STOP BEING A FUCKING DOUCHEBAG PUSHER YOU WANKHANDLE.

I'm speaking as someone who lost his wife (AGAIN) for 7.5 hours last night in BWL, simply due to peer pressure and guilt.

Why oh why oh why are we designing recreation activites with this mindset ?


EDITED TO ADD :  Having read the article, Tigole didn't come off that bad.  Sure, he's saying that large groups should get better rewards, but that's just common sense.  He also talks about putting in content for both playstyles and, really, isn't that all you want ?

Why should large raid-style groups always get the better rewards? The formula for getting the raid items is on a first-order approximation:

<number of players> * <number of hours put into the raid> = <quality of item received>

If you reduce the number of players from 40 or whatever down to 5 that would mean the number of hours required to get the item would go up almost by an order of magnitude but if you broke up the task into smaller chunks, each doable in a couple of hours or so by a 5 man group then it would still be possible for casual people to acquire the items. Think the original long-ass multi-part EQ epics except that the steps that required a full raid group (back in those days I'm sure it's trivial now) would be doable by a 5 person group.

Having been on a couple MC raids now, I honestly have to say that the smaller stuff I'd been doing was way more challenging and took much more skill. WIth 5 people total everyone has to be on the bounce and know what to do. With 40, the superstar "A" group does most of the work while most of the rest of us did the equivalent of reading a TPS report so our boss thinks we're busy. Spamming heals and cleanse at our guild's super-ego, attention whore main tank is not the height of accomplishment.

And honest to god, the egos that these turds in the "A" group get, you'd think they're curing cancer while they win the superbowl. Shut up retards, you're just spamming hotkeys in better gear than I am.

That might be true for MC, but ZG is very different... everyone needs to be on their toes and react to stuff appropriately, at least on boss fights. It's actually a pretty enjoyable dungeon, a pity the rewards aren't really worth the bother for the most part.


-- Z.

...No.

ZG is pretty much straightforward. Just tuned up. And it's mostly about having competent healers and a Main Tank in uber gear. I've killed Hakkar with my guild and I didn't see anything too crazy. It's fun the first few times, there's WAY TOO MUCH trash mobs to fight and it takes a huge amount of time. But then you only need to "learn" it. Then it requires very little attention (I read the forums while I'm on raids..).

I started to take some notes because I was planning to write a summarized guide to give an idea about what sort of gameplay it offers. These are some examples of those notes:
There isn't anything complex or challenging. Just need cooperation and some practice (and good gear for the key classes).

Thats why he said "compared to MC" which basically requires 80% of the raid to simply be there.

Aqualung was a good album though.

I MT in MC now for my guild alliance. I don't think it's super special, so most of the time I'm doing it while drinking a good bit and making drunken southern jokes over TS to the people who are getting all serious.

Yesterday I tanked most of the trash mobs in one of those pink dresses you get from the Lunar festival. Comedy gold.

Here's a ticket.  You may claim sixteen beverages of choice at my house any time.  I have a fine selection of Whisky.

Because, to my mind, they're masochists of the highest order and that always deserves summat.  Either that or they're clinically insane and we should treat our insane with compassion and generosity.

Also, I don't mind what they're getting as long as I'm getting something too.

A full Molten Core run yields 20+ pieces of epic loot. Over half of your guild can and often does get something. For Onyxia it's 4 pieces (10%) and takes a mere 30 minutes to complete.  These aren't your daddy's EQ raids.

Putting in new 10 man stuff would just mean more stuff to do on off days/time for raiders.  MC is done in a day. Onyxia takes a spare half hour.  BWL can be done in a day.  Well, I guess that's where AQ comes in.

But yes, they have backed themselves into a corner.  Everything has to be balanced in respec to the 40 man instances, which may make some of the 10 man stuff look unappealing when the math is done and the loot tables are put in. 


We had a shaman tank Lucifron yesterday.  He did a really good job.

Woohoo! I love me some whisky!

1) HRose, they have said in 1.10 they are removing some of the trash mobs in ZG to make it less of a time suck.

2) MC is stupidly easy. Only Domo and Rag actually take raid skill.

3) BWL is MUCH harder, and MUCH MUCH more fun.

It was a mistake that MC was put in to the game as it was because it is to easy in terms of skill. BWL and ZG are much more challenging, and better dungeons. I have a blast in BWL, even though we spend a ton of time wiping, its still more fun the the snore fest that MC is.

I wouldn't call it a mistake, more like a learning experience.  I doubt they could have put together a raid dungeon like bwl or zg without trying something like MC first, the same way dire maul is more challenging and varied than places like scholo.

Domo and Rags take next to no skill for the bulk of the raid group either. Domo requires one person to be choreographer, some mages to sheep stuff, and a couple of tanks to switch targets once their first chap is dead, and a pair of tanks on Domo and/or a hunter using distracting shot when the main tank has to return from being ported. Nobody else need to do much more than /assist the choreographer. As somebody who's done the choreography a couple of times, I can't say that is terribly involving either. Rags is game of getting enough fire resistance, having a dps race, and everybody running to a collapse point so that the tanks can easily pick up sons. Have enough FR and doing a few dress rehearsals of the collapse so that even the brain-dead get it, and its one of the most easy encounters.

BWL is probably easier than MC (it certainly has less worthless trash mobs) if you can get more than 50% of your raid group to pay attention and show initiative. Which is why its generally perceived to be so much harder. Also, it tends to cause people to blame the strategy and whole classes rather than identifying the brain-dead, which results in the famous "our raid group split up because of BWL" stories. Drama++. I haven't bothered playing my hunter for a month partly due to not having the time available any more, but because the retards decided to blame the shamans, then the hunters, then the whole strategy, then the tanks, controllers, etc, back and repeat. I guess that unlike others, I don't find a bunch of college kids throwing tantrums a fun way to spend every evening.

I remember MC as being very challenging and fun in the begining. Of course doing MC now, more than a year after it's release, is piss easy.

It's not common sense at all.

If you want to give out loot based on time spent (let's say man hours) then you can just adjust drop ratios.

If a 40 man instance takes 2 hours that's 80 man hours. If a 5 man instance takes 2 hours that's 10 man hours. So make the best drops drop 1/8th as often. If you want to adjust for the time and effort it takes to organize a 40 man instance then you can and double that to 160 man hours or something. But the point is it's easy to adjust drop ratios such that large groups and small groups are rewarded about evenly.

Common sense DOES NOT IN ANY WAY dictate that larger groups should get strictly better rewards.

I think you are wrong.

A raid has to have much more coordination to do BWL than MC. Lucifron vs Razorgore? Magmadar vs Vaelstraz? The BWL encounters take much more skill.

Um.  Ok.  I can see you've been throbbing about this.

Some people here should remember that "challenging" =! requiring better gear.

Because that's what I'm seeing. What scales up is the requirements, as to do Rag you need huge Fire Resist gear.

It's not just about man-hours, but the coordination during too. By virtue of the quantity of real people alone, coordinating 40 people for 2 hours is much harder than coordinating 10 for the same time period. That's before taking into account anything about the encounter itself, which mostly remains "challenging" until the single best strategy is devised to defeat it repeatedly.

As such, those who can attend and thrive in a 40-person group are in a more difficult encounter than those in a 10. Yes, this should mean they are more rewarded for it. That this pisses off people in not-40-person groups is not my problem. I feel bad for those new to the genre, but nobody here is.

I'd like to go back to what Kageru said, though no one else has to...


Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzxrt. What's the difference between a 40 man raid that takes 100 runs to gear everyone up and every single mission in DDO with a difficulty setting that may be take 5 runs to gear a full group up? (though I realize DDO doesn't work quite this way). I find large raids reprehensible and think it's the worst design idea in the history of gaming. Having to do a quest more than once because loot for everyone doesn't drop is just weak sauce. But then, the gameplay in all of these games is total ass, why shouldn't the end game be as well? And I think that's exactly what creates this sort of bullshit content.

I agree with schild, except that I think that the term "weak sauce" is self-referential.

So then scale drop rates accordingly.

There is nothing you guys are talking about that can't be dealt with by addition and multiplication.

If a 40 hour instance vs. a 5 hour instance is actually 20x as hard, make good drops drop 20x as often relative to number of participants. This is 3rd grade math. (Although you can dress it up as a Nash equilibria and pretend it's really advanced)

Concrete example: 40 man raid drops 10 really good items. 5 man raid has a 50% chance of dropping ONE really good item. Problem solved. For everyone in the 40 man raid to get a good item it takes 4 runs. For everyone in the 5 man raid to get a good item it takes 10 runs. Is that not the desired ratio that feels fair? Then multiply some more.

You can weight it so that they are exactly even and it's just personal preference which one you do, taking into account the frustration factor of 40 man raids vs. 5 man raids. In the end if you balance time, effort, difficulty, organizational time, etc, you can make them exactly equivalent and the only way one is better than the other is which you prefer.

IMO it's fine to say that since 5 man raids are easier to organize the average reward is less. What is not fine is if you can never ever get items as good as you can get in a 40 man raid.

There's a lot here to cover:

Gear limitation is a growth opportunity for a linear game. These games aren't about items. They're about trying to get them. That itself sets up a large scale between Haves and Everyone Else. As long as there's something to try for, there are very many ways to keep it within just-close-enough reach to keep people trying.

They don't want 5-man groups getting Legendary gear yet. That lets them promise it for the expansion (which they have). It also means they have an easier time of it until then because apparently millions of people like to endlessly repeat content they've long been able to defeat with their eyes closed. Less content is less expensive.

There's also general game balance to consider. If they allowed 5-mans to get the same gear, even eventually, as 40-mans, then people wouldn't need to put up with 40-mans.Greater influx of uber gear.

Mulitpliers would help, but if a 5-man group could do in 10 hours what a 40-man group could in 2, then everyone would go 5-man. You can do that more often. You can take 8 groups of 5 and gear up 8 times faster. The easy answer here is to work the multipler, but to what end? All you're doing is pushing off the inevitable, and people would figure out a way around that too. The pull of a 5-man is much stronger than a 40, and much less than a solo.

Finally, it can't be ignored that the best gear is really only required for the best encounters. You only need uber shit if you're PvPing or raiding BWL+. It's a tech tree to be able to see bigger and better things. Otherwise, you can solo just about everything you're supposed to be allowed to solo with crap you can buy on the AH. Yea yea, the pull of bling is impressive and what not. But by the strict rules of the game, if you've soloed to 50 and farmed for the best gear, you've won. Game over.

Your choice then is to move on or enter into the next set of game rules.

There's other factors too, but the above is the general idea. Everyone is not entitled to the same gear unless they accept the same rules everyone else does. And there's many rules.

And from when a more flat power curve in a MMO that brings the players together instead of apart is bad?

The fact that we are used to it doesn't mean that it's okay to accept it.

The "wrong" part with raiding is not because it's wrong to have big PvE encounters in a game. But it's when these raids become mandatory to compete and be part of a guild. The need to "catch up" or be left out from the game. Getting excluded. The social outcast.

I've seen the MAJORITY of the guilds on my server collapse and get cannibalized by bigger guilds because that's where the artificial appeal of the game is. Or you adapt to it and are able to satisfy those requirements of time commitment and able to join the catass guilds, or you are out and are left watching. Those players will be encouraged to leave if you cannot offer them access to the same uber stuff and remain in the game.

I'm sure that the great majority of the players would like better to stay in their smaller groups and guilds and play with their friends. To find that type of game "viable" instead of ridiculed by the insane, exponential power creep that sets differences of "second citizenship".

I really don't know why it's unreasonable to reward raids in other, different ways instead of just highly unbalanced power differential that consequently becomes YET ANOTHER accessibility barrier to the content.

The problem IS NOT because there's this type of content available. Noone would complain about this.

The problem IS that this content is selective and mandatory.

One destroys the guilds and an healthy social fabric, the other destroys the balance and the natural competitiveness of a MMO.

What pisses me off it's not because they are adding a new raid zone. But because I already imagine what sort of crazy stuff those 18 bosses will drop. And what Blizzard will give to all the other players? A brand new Tier 0.5 armor set to clean the shoes of the uber guilds.

It isn't, but everyone ends up looking exactly the same then.

The only "easy" solution I see for this problem in WoW if they did focus on 5-10 manners would be to make many more of them, and have the gear be designed for very specific specs. The "much more content" thing is what hurts the most. Spreading gear sets out amoung many instances and having 2-3 sets for each class to try and get is simply for making it take more time to get geared up, but at least you could LFG and get in the instances in fairly short order.

Great. You wrote exactly what strengthens my point.

Offer loot in raids that looks different and adds more variance. Without the huge power differential.

Give raids a *different* functional purpose, without this mudflation silliness.

We always forget that these games should be fun and interesting for other reasons than the pointless power growth.

"Put up with" is the key phrase here. It's a game. I don't want to 'put up with' shit. It sounds to me what you are saying is that 5 man groups are more fun, and if they dropped the same gear people would never bother with the 40 man groups. Even if they dropped the same gear much more slowly. Because 40 man groups are just that much more sucky.

So the goal here is to force people to take part in the less fun activities. Wonderful.

I'd like to think that some people actually *like* 40 man groups and find that sort of gameplay more fun than 5 man groups, at least as a change of pace. If that isn't true then the entire concept is retarded. Let's make the end game activity one that most people don't like, even when a viable obvious alternative is available.

If it's a question of forcing people to run 40-mans 100 times or 5-mans 1000 times, if people prefer the 5-mans 1000 times then make that viable.

One of the interesting (as interesting as general forum retardation gets) suggestions I've read is to make raid drops uber for more raiding. Give the feral spec druids, the mortal strike warriors, the enhancement shammies THEIR uber drops in five and ten mans. Draw a definite distinction between raid gear (+healing, massively more mana, tanking) and more generalized epics from smaller dungeons.

That's a really good idea, but at least in the case of warriors, you can be an MS warrior and be a raid tank.

You can with the proper gear but most MS warriors that I've grouped with could give two shits about Might because of allt he tanking stuff on it. They pass and then they're paper if they need to step up to the plate for some emergency tanking because OMG 1% TO CRIT! If figure it would work the same: put the crit gear in five mans, tanking in raids and spread the weapons between both.

Here is what I know:

- I do NOT like to sit around watching chat for hours while 40 people figure out what they want to do and how they want to do it.  I do not pay good money for that activity.  It bites!
- I DO want small instances with a small group (5-10) that is VERY challenging.  Yes, wipes will occur, but when the instance only takes an hour when done right, it isn't a big deal.  You can pick yourself up and hit it again pretty easy.
- I DO want a reward for my group every time we go into an instance.  If only 20% of my group gets what they want, I'll still be happy.  Do not make it so I have to go through instance with absolutely no "good" drops throughout.
- I DO want instances that build on themselves more than just "gearing up."  I want the lore to make sense from one step to the other.  Make it so your guildmates can work together to both gear up and finish out quest steps together easily.  Make it so it isn't a complete waste of time for those that have already done the instances 10 times.  If they are challenging and people get nice items everytime, then the experience will still be rewarding to them. Plus, an hour isn't too much to ask most of the time.  It seems like most people in my guild are just waiting around for something to happen and currently that is 10+ content.

I pay money to be entertained from the moment I log in to the moment I log off.  No, no MMOG has done this yet, but some are closer than others. (The journey to 60 in WoW is pretty close IMO.)  40 man content goes in a completely opposite direction to this goal.

The real problem as I see it is not phat l3wtz or even "casual vs. raid". The problem is that Burning Crusade is 6 months away and we're wiling away the time trying to make the game fun. Which mean you're either pining away for better loot, or trying to experience the content that raids experience.

EQ2 has it right - they're already putting out their 2nd expansion in the time that WoW has taken to just announce details on one. Chalk it up to experience on SoE's part - they know the cycle - they know that expansion packs - not non-raid dungeons - keep the gamers coming. Just look at EQ 1. still going strong after a billion years and tons of expansions.

We will not care about MC 40 mans or AQ catasses when the expansion comes out because there will be new content to explore. A new world, and that's really what captures attention - the never ending quest for "something new". It doesn't matter if you get a new 5-10 man dungeon because in 1 months time you'll have mastered it, completed your hawt armor set, gotten that uber sword and be right back where you started. Bored, at 60.

Waiting for the expansion. Waiting to see a new world, new content, new weapons to lust after. No one will care at level 70 that you have full purplez because everyone will be lusting after full orange with a red weapon. The key to this rat race is to give something new, often and big - and that's done when you pull out your wallet to buy that nice cardboard box labelled "expansion pack".

Lurk More.

Yah, lagging on that front is hurting WoW big time.   :roll:

The funny thing is I just don't get why people think those of us who love 5 man instances don't like teamwork. When my group of 5 friends are going and doing UBRS with just us that requires a HELL of a lot more team work than raiding. I have done raiding in eq I have no desire to be a cog with 39 other people. That game play is neither fun nor interesting to me.

When people need to do constant parsing to make sure everybody on the raid is awake thats a big problem.

In a 5 man group you know god damn well that everybody is there and playing or you all croak.

I am a very social person in that I don't play mmrpg to solo. I also don't play mmrpg to be a no named grunt with 39 other people 5 of which may actually need to pay attention.

Now if it was like eq1 and you never interacted directly vs the raiders it would be no big deal. Unfortunatly the end game as it stands for non raiders is pvp. And the more 40 man epic dungeons that get added with no additions for weapons/gear for non raiders will make the level 60 bracket totally pointless and frustrating.

It isn't so much that purple gear is a ton better than blue gear. Level vs level they are better but not hugely so. The problem is in raids people are getting like level 70 or 80 gear compared to the max level 60 quality blues non raiders get.

It would not be so bad if by pvping you could more reasonably get the blue or purple rewards. I am getting damn close to the class specific blue gear but jesus its hard to keep progressing if you ever do anything other than just pvp 24/7.

I wish the pvp rewards were more like the LODN rewards were you could over time build up points to buy the gear you want. This way eventually if people did it enough they would get gear decent enough to not get blasted.

kaid

Easy solution: Offer titles/trophies from raids. Offer unique armor skins or dyes.

People that care about epeen crap can get their "Dragon Slayer" title and some unique armor skins to show off.  More casual players can get the same stats without having to catass hours with 39 other leet kiddies.  It gives motivation to the hardcore while allowing the casual to enjoy content.  It also decreases the impact of raid gear on PvP.  The DAoC classic servers got this right.  A group of 5-6 people could outfit themselves in great equipment augmented by crafted gear.  I had a great template on the Gareth server and got all of my loot with small groups or from player-crafters.

My alternative is to create a game where the best items are made through crafting.  The problem is that most games make crafting so boring that it's not a minigame in itself.  Add some skill to high end crafting and player-crafted gear would not only be valued, but the players may actually enjoy making it.

My experience of raid teamwork was that I worked in a team of 15-25 people on most nights, while the rest got stoned and fucked around on teamspeak making animal noises while largely oblivious to what was happening in the game. This was merely annoying in MC as it slowed down what's already a nightmare weekly grind, but it basically made BWL nearly impossible. Even stuff like Onyxia was tougher than it should have been. To be fair, less folks jerked around in BWL because it wasn't quite as boring, but it only took a handful to make it pointless.

The 40 person raids are not interesting enough to retain most people's attention for several hours at a time, and its tough to find 40 people single-minded enough to knuckle down on a regular basis despite it being boring as hell. I can do that, but then I've worked for a living for half my life. Most WoW players haven't been subjected to such soul crushing misery and weren't planning on a game to be their first experience of it. Good for them, to be honest.

Expansions or not, the problem will continue to be that in any MMOG that you catass your time away in there will not be enough original content. If the content requires many hours of dedication, restraint and self-sacrifice there will only be a small number of people willing to do it. Where WoW goes horribly wrong is that the raid content undermines the rest of the game, and redressing that would undermine the raid content. EQ created a lot more content for non-raid folks after the game was launched than WoW has. EQ also had less focus on PvP. Assuming you won't raid, once you've burned through all the non-raid instances in WoW and PvP on your server has become overly dominated by people in full epic sets there's little to do but start another character. And the quest variety really only allows scope for two characters per faction unless you want excessive repetition. That's been enough to keep churn rates low in WoW for quite some time, but it will pick up. Fortunately, WoW still has good word of mouth reviews, so it hasn't hit saturation yet. Expansions are typically a barrier to entry to new players, not an attraction.

I think Blizzard would do well to look at creating a lot of non-raid content. It will be hugely expensive and consume an army of developers, but it will allow them to retain a much larger proportion of what is a staggeringly huge player base. That's not important now, and probably wont be for another half year to a year, but WoW will hit market saturation at some point, and raiders and high-level expansions won't retain the numbers.

Nailed right on the head. And you start to think why should I level another alt if it's goingto be the same endgame. The best part is that the more they rely on faction grinding then the less you're able to invest time in an alt because there are fifty things you have to grind faction for.

If they wanted me to reputation grind, they would have had to have given me a reason to do so. I'm grateful to the folks who did and who can make the +15 agility enchantments and so on, but that's about all that's useful. If gear is your thing (and frankly, its all that WoW is about) then you're better off in a raid group than grinding rep. And, lets face it, grinding rep is even more soul destroying than raiding.

What's funny is that the whole balance of power based on items thing has undermined many smaller raiding guilds, since they have filled up with PvPers who need gear. Unless the items the PvPer needs drop on a particular night, they'll blow off raiding to grind PvP honor, meaning the smaller guilds need to either be extremely hardcore and require absolute attendance, or expand to a much larger size to accomodate folks PvPing. From the PvPer perspective, its hard to find good raid guild that will tolerate raiding being second to PvP and which will accomodate spending DKP on items that are ideal for your PvP but better for other classes PvE. Fun stuff.

The reputation grind currently is kinda funny. I am a blacksmith and currently there are a few good items you can get from the old rep grind but most of said items require you to raid to get the lava cores and various other bits. So this means that the items I would really want to grind to get still are not accessible to make.

Currently other than pvp in things like altarac valley there is not much for me to do when I log in at 60. I am pretty fully geared with diremaul and other instance stuff and the current top end blue set valor is a downgrade over what I am currently using unless I have the full set and even then its highly questionable.

The problem with PVP in the 60 bracket is as time goes on it becomes more and more pointless to try to fight due to mudflation of the raiders. This problem is basically going to keep escalating until only the hard core raiders will be allowed to pvp and generally if you are hard core raiding you are likely not a hard core pvp person.

kaid

But that's why ZG and AQ are so great! Raids AND faction grind! Two taste sensations in one!

Yes. As an aside, you might want to quote less, especially for one-liners, before the notoriously intolerent folks round here form a torch-bearing angry mob.

I'm just trying to be really gregarious so I can sell you guys on my products, is all.

 We’ve been hard at work at Patch 1.10 and I’m excited to bring you a small sneak preview of some of the content. We’ll be offering a series of quests for maximum level players so they can obtain a really good, class-specific armor set. This should prove to be a great way for non-raiding players to upgrade their gear. Here are some highlights:

• Characters follow a new quest line to obtain an armor set
• The armor sets contain 4 rare and 4 epic pieces
• Some of the pieces can be obtained by soloing (including one of the epic pieces)
• The most difficult pieces to obtain require a UBRS level group
• We are adding new bosses to existing dungeons
• Some of the existing dungeons are being re-itemized (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=6890058&p=1&tmp=1#post6890058)

Edit: apparently, you upgrade your blue sets from UBRS, Scholo, etc.  So you still have to grind for those.

It's just mudflation.

Right after this they will add another dungeon with even better loot for raiders. The real problem here is letting people use that equipment in PvP, especially in battlegrounds.

I am not one of those types of people that has to have everything. I play at my own pace. I'll probably never have the best possible equipment and I don't care. But it's lame that structured PvP is at the mercy of raid-level equipment.

In FFXI the PvP instances are level restricted. The max level in-game is 75 and the max level for the big Ballista (PvP) tourney is 60. (If you are over the cap you are just de-levelled temporarily) So all the super-loot you get at level 70+ doesn't matter at all. Simple, elegant solution. Of course that doesn't work for open PvP but it works fine for structured PvP like battlegrounds.

They really need to decide if battlegrounds are supposed to be a test of skill or a test of loot and a way to farm items and such.

I'd be perfectly happy if they changed it to counterstrike buy-out method in the instances.

You have three or so kits per class in WSG/AV/AB and you got to chose.  Everyone uses the same kits and then it becomes more skill/organization based.  Or some shit.

Doesn't matter, will never happen.  Maybe they could release that option on test with the next BG.

I like gearing up for PVE/PVP and I really don't get everyone's beef with it. People don't start off games with advantages, because the game doesn't start when the "you are eligible to enter blah blah blah" gump pops up. It starts at level 1, when we all have the same shitty, shitty gear. When someone with twice as many purples than you but less pvp skill beats you down, they beat you in the raiding/gearing aspect of the game.

Actually I lie, I do get people's beef with it. You don't have enough time, or don't like raiding, or couldn't get into one of the uber guilds. Now I can understand and appreciate that, but to me you're asking for an entirely different game when you want for gearing up not to matter.

No you don't, and you sound like a condescending douchetard, so please stop telling people how they feel. Thanks.

But like I said it doesn't matter (much) in FFXI and people like that.

it comes down to lack of design goals and a lack of clarity of purpose. Blizzards needs to decide what battlegrounds are actually for. Are they a test of skill? A test of grinding? They could make battlegrounds of different level caps and let people choose.

It seems to me the idea was that the PvP servers gave open PvP, and battlegrounds more structured, competitive PvP. You can't drive a tank in an NFL game because you saved up and bought one in real life.

I'm not going to claim that that is how it HAS to be. Some people want BGs to be a test of equipment as well as skill. Some don't. My point is that they need to *decide*. Or they could easily support both and make everyone happy!

Right now the concept of BGs is a mess. They are competitive yet raid-level equipment matters, there are quests and things you can do in them and items you can get that have nothing to do with the BG, etc.

They should just make a battleground that has no quests or fish or items or any crap like that, start everyone even and have a true test of skill. It wouldn't be hard.

But for some reason (as evidenced by War3) they now feel the need to mix all these things together. War3 was a worse game than SC mostly because of all the stupid side-crap like farming mobs that detracted from the main point.

On these boards we've gone through the "player skill vs. player resources" debate many times, there is no need to rehash - there is a difference, and some people don't want player resources to be part of the equation. It would be *easy* to make these people happy.

It's *especially* important when you see that the 2 end-game activities are described as PvP and raiding. You don't have to PvP to raid - making people raid to PvP effectively is silly. Part of the point of PvP endgame is to please people who DON'T LIKE RAIDING.

Again in FFXI there are people that raid a lot, and people that PvP a lot. Some people do both but you do tend to see it appealing to distinct groups. Keeping distinct groups of players happy is a good thing - pissing off a distinct group for no reason is a bad thing.


No, what people are asking for is literally 20 hours of coding to bring a feature up to par with a similar feature that already exists in a competitor. Adding a level or equipment cap to a battleground is *hardly* an "entirely different game."

I guess I should have hit the quote button instead of the reply one. My last post was directed at what MrHat said in the post above me. What he is asking for is to take the whole gear advancement section out of BGs, and I don't see why that should be at all in a MMOG game like WoW.

If you guys want to make gear brackets that's fine with me. Force preset groups to fight preset groups to fight? Fine with me so long as the variety of opponents and que times don't suffer (ie. cross-server BGs). I don't honor grind so I don't need to crush people who have no chance of fighting back. That is fun for a little bit, but it gets old fast. I can see how it would suck even more from the other side of the gear coin. But to take gear out of the equation altogether? What if my equal-level, equal rarity suit is better than yours? Should I not be rewarded for having chosen my gear appropriately? I just don't see why you would want to do that.

Chosen your gear appropriately? Heh. I think rather more people who play WoW are capable of doing the min-max sums than the number who raid Neferian. If you want to test peoples' gear choices, you might as well make every item in the game available for lease at the battlefields, and people can build their ultimate fighting machine before they enter. I suspect that most people of a class would be rather similarly equipped. Even if they're all more stupid than you, they can probably read cheat sites.

Face it, the raiding game is currently breaking the PvP game, and things are moving downhill fast for the bulk of players who do not (for whatever reason) raid. As somebody who is a hardcore raider, you may find this to be a most welcome state of affairs, but it is not a successful formula for the game's continued growth.

The problem is not that there are folks with better gear fighting against folks with poorer gear. The problem is that there is a gulf of such extreme proportions between raid gear and everything else, and it permeates every aspect of the game. As each week passes, it becomes more the case that if you do not wish to spend most of your time end-game raiding, there is little on offer in WoW long term. That's not somewhere Blizzard should want to go with under 10% of their user population regularly raiding.

I wasn't implying that it's an uncommon ability to put together a good suit of gear, but you always see people run around with gear that is inferior to other items in that tier that they could be wearing instead. Whether that is because you just haven't been lucky enough for it to drop for you, or because you simply don't understand the gear choices well enough, some people will have better gear than others inspite of having the same sources. I like putting together a suit and going out to gather it. I like to see it coming together making my char stronger, picking up a few upgrades to use as placeholders til the best item drops, etc. To me that's the core of the gameplay. When I go to DM North I'll have fun doing it, but a big part of why I do it is what it will get me (or the others in the party). Maybe you'll see it as bizarre or being a loot whore or whetever, but I just wouldn't see a point in instancing if they didn't get me phat lewt. I didn't play Baldur's Gate thousands of times, because the first time through was largely sufficient. I did play singleplayer Diablo 2 quite a lot though because there was always teh shiny to gather.

What would be so wrong with giving each color of rarity a multiplier and applying it to the level of the item, then adding up all the items on a person for their gear total and then basing brackets off that? You could have a bracket where it was naked through to all blues with 4-5 MC/ZG/honor/BG purples, and another bracket where it was 4-5 MC/ZG/etc purples all the way through to full BWL/AQ gear. Seems to me that it would be a solution that wouldn't take the whole point out of gearing up. Sure you'd have people who sit right on the edge of the gear limit, but that'd be like level 29s in the 20-29 bracket when you're like 26-27 (and not like 29s with full blues/high greens and high lvl enchants in the 20-29 bracket like it is now).

EDIT: Plus they are looking to put in more non-raider gear. Between BG rewards, BoE epics, craftables, and the new solo-to-small-raid gear I don't think there would be much of a chasm unless you're talking people who just do not play enough at all (when I say not enough I look at people who play less than an hour a day over the course of a week). I'm in the camp that people shouldn't be able to just do an equivalent 5-man and gear up like a raider over a longer time. But I see no reason for a combo of 5-mans, craftables, etc to add up to near what a raider can expect to have.

I don't think you can expect people to get BG rewards with a less-than-insane time investment.

(Neutral->Exalted is 42000 rep)
AV: This one is actually doable (I have exalted on 1 char and revered on 2 and I've not leeched rep at all). About 1-2 months unless you really grind away at it.
AB: You get 10 rep per 200 points and 50 per 3 marks of honor. On my server, horde wins 80% of the time, meaning I'll get an average of 100 rep per AB. This means 420 AB battles until exalted. At 20 minutes a game (shorter battles mean less rep) and 15 minute queues, that's 245 hours of nothing but AB or waiting for AB. FWIW, after 4 months, I'm still only halfway through honored.
WSG: You get 14 rep per flag capture and 50 per 3 marks of honor. Assuming a 50/50 battle without turtling (optimistic), you'll get around 60 rep per WSG. That means 700 WSG matches, at 10 minutes a game that's 116 hours of WSG plus the queues (which are non-existant on WSG holiday, but forget about it otherwise). I'm not even at friendly with WSG, though that's mostly due to me disliking the BG altogether.

Now, of course these aren't hard (or particularly accurate) numbers, there are some quests that alleviate the pain somewhat... but BGs are a horrid grind, your average "casual player" is very unlikely to make it past honored. Well, maybe in AV.


-- Z.

Yeah I'll agree that that the BG grind is too much if you really tried to go at it, though I'll disagree on the AV being a hard one. On my server alliance haven't won AV's until just recently, but I still got up relatively high (somewhere in reverred) going to something like 1-2 a week since I was 60 (EDIT: it's a new server, I've been 60 for around 2 months). I already have guildies who are 1000/1000 exalted. It's the AB/WSG grinds that are terrible (I like to say "1*** rep to friendly!!" whenever people go on about how close to reverred they are in WSG :P). I was also pointing more to the non-raider specifically than the casual person, even someone who still plays a fair bit, so I wasn't really looking at how viable time-wise they were, just that the options exist. So if you wanna say it takes too long for the reward I'll listen and possibly agree, but the options exist is all I'm saying.

Funnily enough raiding has always been the fastest, easiest, and most painless way to get purples, even if you don't have a taste for it.

Gotta call you on this - that's your opinion.  And, in my opinion, totally, totally wrong.  I LIKED the enhancements and depth that Warcraft 3 added.  I played a fuck of a lot of starcraft and I had to have a bloody intervention to get me to stop playing wc3.

Incidentally, Mr Lum chimed in with an interesting and easy-read view on the matter over at Brokentoys.

So it doesn't matter that it takes you 1000 hours of play to get your set and me 1100 hours to get mine.  It only matters what the size of the group is?  Nevermind that it may take me 4x longer (in terms of real time days, not play hours) to do it?

What you're saying is that 40 man is IT.  IT is THE only way you should get the best rewards.  Am I right?

If you say yes, I could not agree any less and that kind of design intent will eventually drive me from the game.

Well the way I see it is this, if there is a way to get exactly everything I need doing just 5-mans, why the hell would I ever raid? Yes yes, I know where this is going to take us, let me continue. My point is, it doesn't make sense for something to be put into the game that is already narrow and then make decisions that marginalise it further. A 5-man dungeon is basically a raid in small scale, same way as with soloing is to 5-mans. Should someone be able to solo all the epics they would ever need? No, because then there's less people to join your 5-man-epic group when they can do all that without the added baggage of people? It's the same reason so many people don't instance on the way up, why should they when the rewards they can buy from the AH, quest for, or pick up are good enough? Some people do... but not really enough.

So really I think it's gotta be a combo. Doing it all the exact same way on the small-scale is not a good idea IMO, but doing 5-mans, farming mats/gold for crafted items, grinding some rep, grinding some pvp rep, etc to build up a suit seems fine to me. But even then it can't be the exact same power level as raiding gear or again, why raid for? If you wanna kill or further marginalise raiding then sure, go ahead, but it just doesn't make sense from the Blizz perspective considering how much work they've put into the raid instances lately.

Also yes, what I am basically saying is that while I do enjoy raiding, I sure as hell wouldn't find it enjoyable enough to deal with 39 other people's shit in a raid if the rewards weren't tasty.

EDIT: Also raiding it is very easy to fill content with. It's quite interesting how it works really. So much of people's time is spent dealing with the shit that comes with a whole bunch of people put together in a quest for phat lewt they can't fully share. Sorting out DKP, finding another druid to replace that fucker that blew up at people in guild chat all the time, dealing with another guild going on about some outside boss or your members talking shit on them, or your members ninja'd some POS item and you gotta make restitutions, etc. Then there's all the wiped I just refuse to tolerate in 5-mans. We wipe more than 2-3 times in an instance and I label it a "shit dungeon" and vow never to come back. I wipe 2-3 times on a single raid boss I've never done before and I'm like "shit that was easy". The farming for consumables... you get the point. It's a great filler, and whichever dev first thoguht of it was a fucking genious.

That logic is so circular I think I'm swirling down the drain.

It's 3am here.

EDIT: Let me try and break it down to bite-size chunks. I think I can do that.

- People like teh shiney.
- People are willing to do almost anything to get the shiney.
- Raiding makes for good filler content to keep people busy.
- Shineys make for a good carrot for raiding.
- Without the carrot, not enough people would raid.
- So much raiding content is already done or in progress.

So why would blizz take away the raiding carrot?

All you've said is that we have to have 40 man raids because we've always had them.  Nevermind the fact people would rather do 5-man's if they had the choice (your words.)  40 man raids keep those pesky 2 hour a night casuals out of our hair.  We enjoy this game as it is, so why let them enjoy it?

Pain is good in your world?

I don't care which one is easier to develop and maintain.  I know what I want so I ask for it.  Why do I care what effect it has on the developer?  What other industry works that way? 

Hmm, I shouldn't ask for a car that has a CD player in it.  That would really be hard for some engineer to figure out.  I'll just keep listening to the radio.

If the feedback is, "But they'll raise their prices!," great, do it.  I'd rather pay $19.99/mo for a game I can always sit down and enjoy than $14.99/mo on something I'm blocked from even attempting to enjoy unless I want to jeopardize my family and work.

I do not understand the difficulty with scaleable content or segemented content.  If there are people who enjoy the pain of raiding - and Cal, I think you need help - then let them do it.

But scale it down so that it STARTS with a five man and goes up from there.

Someone also suggested that the main 'raiding zone' be split into subzones that affect the main area.  Say, for example, an uber boss that you can go in with 40 men and destroy - Hard.  Then say he has four rooms of power that you can five man to decrease his power till he's at the stage where you can five man him.  The Casual player suddenly gets more of the content and the raid group misses NOTHING.

Put the purples on a sliding scale.  6 of them drop.  6 of them drop from the big dude or, if you do it the other way, one from each.

WHY THE FUCK NOT ?

I'm having trouble following the logic here of why 40-man raids are terrific. 

If someone says, "I enjoy 40-man raids" - I get that.  It's a playstyle thing.

But I keep hearing that people don't particularly enjoy 40-man raids.  They do it because it's the only way to get the best equipment.  They don't want their efforts "marginalized" by making similar equipment available to people for a similar timesink in manhours but in 5 hour groups.

Re: 40-man raid enjoyment - I do and I don't.  I do enjoy them with people who are on time, who do their job and don't fuck up due to inattention, who give clear instructions and, well, basically people who are together.  Leading such a raid takes skill and organization.  I don't enjoy raids when it takes people an hour to get it together, with people who fuck up, don't pay attention, afk without explanation, and so on.

Where do the other 3 classes fit in is my first question. Sure as shit, if they put out 5 man hard content someone would figure out the optimum classes and anyone not in that class would never, ever see a spot in a group  after that.

Um.  That's the same shit we heard time and time again when the classes were announced.

It doesn't happen.

I can't think of a single five man instance where it does happen - prove me wrong.  Tell me one I CAN'T do with a random 5 man group right now.

Besides, SCALEABLE.  Take ten.  Take 8.  Take 32.

Scale it.

It doesnt matter if it can be done, it's what is easy. An example is taking a warlock to DM West. Sure it can be done with out it but the assmunchers that put together groups are going to optimise it to be easiest for the same reason they run Strath with 10 and UBRS with 15, they want the loot the easiest way possible. Besides, isn't this supposed to be unusually difficult content to justify the dropping of epics? Unless you want epics from DM level instances it's sure to be easier for one group of characters than another.

Calantus is basically just saying what I said in the fifth post of this thread. If there was any alternative to having to put up with 39 other peoples' pissing and moaning, most everybody would take it, and it would require more content creation. However, there is an implication in his posts that he wouldn't like such a scenario because it would allow more people to attain the best gear. In essence, because so few people are prepared to tolerate the shit of 39 others' for most of their game time, it satisfies his achiever motivations and gives him more peacock feathers.

Fuck me.

LET THE ASSMUNCHERS DO WHAT THEY WANT.  IT'S THEIR GAME TOO.  IF THEY WANT TO TAKE THE OPTIMUM PATH AT THE EXPENSE OF PLAYING OTHER CHARACTERS AND DIVERSITY, SO WHAT ?


I do not understand why you care.  Them having an easy time of it and getting the gear first does not affect your game one whit.

Edited;  Replying to Phred, Not Righ.  Tho the point seems much the same.

I'm with you and almost everybody else here Ironwood. The whole raid content thing is a shambles and needs ripped to shreds before the game goes down the pisser. However WoW has 5 billion players, so they can probably turn it into a smaller game for masochists only and still be wildy successful.

Just pointing out the design problems. How do you make it challenging for everyone without making it easy for an optimized group.

Who cares? Who cares if they think it's easy? Who cares if the part timer gets the same shiny? Fuck I raid and I don't care. Nobody in their right mind cares.

*shakes head*
Not this again.
I can't fault players new the genre, but most of you should have known better.

I tried to get my wife into WoW.  Didn't work.  Waiting for Brokeback Online.

There will always be min/maxers, people that try to optimize every last detail.  They will always make the provided content easy.

If designers cater to them, then the game becomes impossible for anyone else to play because they will out-think anything thrown at them by the devs.  Always.

Not all MMOG players cut their teeth on loot centric MMOGs like EQ.

I knew and know better.  I still expect better and WoW is so frustrating close to having a great system.  They are really on a knife's edge IMO.  They are at the point where they need to go one direction or the other.

1.  Maintain the 5+ million subscriber subs by continuing to expand upon the casual player's experience.  They will maintain because keeping WoW casual even up into the higher end game content will appeal to new players to the market each year.
2.  Concentrate only on raiders and accept the standard MMOG decline in subs as the new shiney comes out elsewhere.  Future expansions will only work to lock new players out of the game rather than invite them in.

I vote for scaleable too btw.  I also like the idea of giving 40 man instances some bragging right modifier to characters (colors, badges, etc.)  There are tons of ideas to continue to give 40 man raiders the perception that their activity still reaps the "best" rewards, while 5-20 man groups can continue to work on their own (non-neon orange glow) gear.

They should just tone the shoulders down for non-raid sets. Then the raiders could have the exclusivity of huge penises on their shoulders as intended.

No, Tigole, it really wouldn't. It's called options, cuntmuffin, and it's the difference between a casual player and a raider. A casual player doesn't give a shit if the stuff he gets is available to everyone or not.

To a raider it would be.  Lets see what it takes to down Nefarian?

At least (from my limited knowledge):
A guild of 40-70 people dedicated folk that can take orders and know what they're doing.  You need to have 40 online and available at all times. A 70 man roster means you'll have that and some spare available.  (not easy)
People need to be competent (hard)
Enough Onyxia Scale cloaks to outfit the entire group.  Aka kill Ony lots (not hard).
Months spent in BWL. Days with 20g repair bills.  (not easy)
People equiped in good mix of tier 1 and tier 2 gear.  This means you've had Ragnaros on farm status for a while. (not easy, well, kinda is now)

There's a lot of work that goes into downing Nef. It's a HAAYUUGE time commitment to even sniff Nefarian gear.  Do you think the 10 random assgoblins that get together for a 90 minute candy run of undead Strath side deserve to get the same shit? They deserve decent gear and to be rewarded for their efforts for sure. I think that's where the upgradable tier 0 shit they're talking about comes in.  It still won't probably won't be as impressive BWL/AQ40-man gear but it'll likely have stats the casual player would appreciate, like more melee crits for a healer. 

So, the raider is supposed to spend months of slow progress, kill his grand foozle and get something he could have gotten with a /random 100 in a PUG? I'm not sure how many raid guilds would exist in that situation.  I know schild would cry a tear of joy while he finds something else to whine at from an angle of complete ignorance, but it goes against the current reality and working formula for the game.  Raids are what they consider the highest level of achievement.  They value killing uber_dragon_foozle over chieftan_of_some_dumb_ogre_tribe and the loot reflects that.  Of course as I said, time is a huge (possibly the main) factor for it, so they've put in grind-a-thon faction gear that anyone can get given a tollerance for tedium (and they'll be adding more of it).  Not a big fan of this type of crap, personally.  Faction grinds make me nauseous.

But, I'm too invested into the current status quo to really have an objective opinion on all of this. I agree with Tigole (ok, now I puked a bit in my mouth).

Here's my take on how I'd like the gear to work as to keep everyone as little pissed off as possible (a lot of this is probably regurgitated elsewhere in the thread**):

*Keep raid gear angled toward raiders.  They already pretty much do this with the odd piece here and there that doesn't conform to tradional raid specs.  Give them the high healing bonuses for shaman and druids, the tanking bonuses to warriors, etc.  Make it a bit better than "casual" epics.  Make this gear help in the new content the raiders are expected to progress to.  IE, keep them running the gaultlet.
*Make casual obtainable gear that can be upgraded through some sort of gathering (repeated runs) or faction cockblock.  Sorry, I just don't think they should turn guys like Baron into an epic pinata or have legendary world drops just because you farm lvl 58 wolves for an hour a day. 
*No crafting recipes should be obtainable only through raiding.  Attaching them to faction grinds is fine as long as they're still accessible to all.  Not many raiders actually build this crap outside of resist gear.
*More 5-10 man instances. More quests with worthwhile rewards at 60.  The initial lvl 60 quests for the most part had shitty rewards.
*Some sort of instance progression for 5-10 man content.  Make something difficult with ZG or better quality loot that tests people.  Note: the time commitment to master this may fly in the face of "casual" play.
*After a set amount of time, remove the cock-block keys from certain instances.  I'd like to see Onyxia keys, BWL attunement and UBRS keys all dissolve into a puff of smoke once the content has been available to everyone for 6 months.

Basically, I'd like so both sides can somewhat close the gap on the PVP aspect. Give the casual player the opportunity to achieve some equality.  That's currently not possible in raids or through the PVP honor grind.  It's available through BGs but only AV has a realistic time table for someone that doesn't play a ton of WoW. Give them the opportunity for the shiney, but it shouldn't be a handout.

That was a lot of rambling. Not sure any of it made sense.

**Too much of a vomit motif?

I agree a lot with Rasix here.

I don't play WoW atm for numerous reasons, but what I enjoyed most in WoW was in fact the 40 people raids. I'm sorry that most of you seems to get surrounded by asses, but I had the fortune of playing in a guild without asses, well there were some in the begining but they got kicked out pretty fast. The dynamic which 40 man raids can offer simply can't be done in a 5 man raid. The difficulty can also be way higher in a 40 man raid and still be doable. If they throw in a tough 5 man encounter it will either never be completed, or it will be completed within 24 hours. 5 is simply to few to present any organising and tactic possibilities, and WoW is after all just as 99% of the MMORPGs just auto attack.

I'm all for big ass solo quests taking very very long time to complete and then awarding phat loot. But an organized 40 man raid should imo yield phats faster.

I don't think they should take 40 man raids out of the game (heck, if I had time to pvp and raid I'd do both).  I think they should be realistic about the extreme excessiveness of the rewards for the PvE raiders when compared to how impossible it is to get similar rewards for an equaly valid, more hardcore, more difficult playstyle, that requires much more skill.

Giving people who slowly poke their way through a silly scripted encounter with 40 others to keep them company an IWIN button in a different aspect of the game is just stupid.  Give the PvE'ers shit that helps them in PvE, but leave them out of our PvP.

The attainable rewards for a retard in PvE are so fucking insane when compared to the obtainable rewards for a retard with the same time limitations in PvP.  And the rewards cause the PvE'ers to be so fucking crazy overpowered in PvP that they don't have to have a single ounce of skill to two shot everyone on the field.  Fix that and you can take your 40 man raid and shove it up your ass and yodle the star spangled banner for all I care..

I stopped reading there. Because really, I DO think they should deserve to get the same shit. Really, there's no point in arguing past that.

All of the things you mentioned, other than the not acting like complete retards, are time-sink cockblocks, including having to have 40 people online at all times. It's bullshit. It doesn't involve a skill, it doesn't require the player to be something extraordinary.

My MMOG is not my wife/girlfriend/life. It's my escapist fantasy. I want to be able to devote the time I want to devote to it and no more, and I want to have a reasonable assumption that I can enjoy the all the content available at my choosing. Now I know it isn't that way, because we have levels and gated content. But really, that's all cockblocks to keep people subscribed. It tests patience. I have a job that tests my patience enough, and enough random assgoblins in real life to test said tolerance of assgoblinery as well. I don't need it from my MMOG.

I agree with Rasix as well in general theory of risk-vs-reward, but I don't want to play that game.


That's my take, but I'm not throwing stones.


You said a mouthful.  Haemish is on-target for how I feel.

It should be callled the "Suffering is a Virtrue" Theory.

It works for Catholics.

The game and the reward system for it is based upon effort.  This system needs to be extended to everyone (not those just doing it on a macro scale). But changing the reward system into something more instantly gratifying and random changes the game into something it's not.  WoW is not Diablo 2 online.

Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy a WoW with a D2 loot system where Eaglehorn drops of a random imp on hell level X. With battlegrounds, world pvp, and some perhaps even some large group content (perhaps just scalable content depending on group size, but allow for BIG groups) the entire package would be a blast.  The very nature and feel of the game would need to change, and it's not something I think they should risk their sizeable player base on. 

I think some of the entitlement stuff is just pissing into the wind until some real drastic changes come to MMOs in general.  The content gap aint going nowhere.  That's why I played single player games for 6 months before I resubbed to WoW.

It's also why I don't play many MMOG's for long, don't pay much money for MMOG's and write here.

It's not calling suffering a virtue at all. However, what it is doing is rewarding the meta-gaming, not the gaming. Is the actual individual level of play much harder between raiding and other instances or PvP? Rarely - in fact, sometimes is much easier because most encounters are set up to be forgiving of individual attention and judgement lapses. What are more difficult (as suggested in the screeds above this) are tasks like communicating between a large number of people, keeping them all happy with loot distribution, scheduling them, giving them all a feeling of self-worth while preventing it being a guild of armchair quarterbacks, excluding people who might not remain for the long term so that they wont dilute the gearing up, and so on. Some people love doing that shit, but rewarding people for game-based achievements rather than meta-game ones is not tantamount to giving "handouts". What a silly perspective.

I <3 Righ.

Gah, I had a big point by point Bruce-a-matic-76 post prepared and I just didn't feel like hitting submit.  I agree on just about all points to varying degrees.  Mostly I don't agree on some of the PVE aspects because most of the non-raid content currently in the game is a joke difficulty-wise and yes, it was a joke before some of my gear turned purple or even blue.  And I actually do believe you should reward meta-gaming.  Whether or not WoW is rewarding it in the wrong way currently is somewhat likely.  It already has its reward of exclusive content.

I'd agree in all aspects when it comes to PVP.  They need to reward the skill and achievement but not in the current manor of a large honor and faction grind. A way to better separate the PVE and BGs would be a welcome solution. Something similar to what Hat suggested with "kits" or whatnot might be a good way to do it.

Edit: I suck at posting.

All risk in MMOG is time lost.  If you lose enough time it is suffering.  Different people have different thresholds.  Since raids require the most time lost, they require the best rewards otherwise the equation falls apart.  If organizing groups wasn't suffering, why wouldn't they just do it in real life? Just get 40 friends together and solve a large NP equation by hand.  It would be as difficult as a raid and since people like organizing so much it would be lots of fun with no monthly fee.  Next week they can do a larger equation, than brag on the internet who's equation is the largest.

Don't see how this is related.  I don't think "rewarding people for game-based achievements" are handsout.  But I imagine a disciple of "risk/reward" would think so if they thought "game-based" people didn't have to suffer as much as them to get the same rewards.

Due primarily to endless nerfings of the difficulty over time by people who found the playing a game aspect of the game unrewarding.

Boo-fucking-hoo?  So what, buff it all, up the rewards, and leave the no-skill hacks shouting at a fence that they want their baseball back?  That might anger 80% of the player base.  :rimshot:

 

When you get down to it, I agree with Righ and Haemish. I don't like the idea of a game rewarding people for things done completely outside the game. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that we have to put up with 40 man raids. They could have capped it at 20, and we would have been fine. The world would still turn, and loot would get distributed. But no, instead they made the cap so fucking high in terms of people that a normal sized guild could never compete. THAT's my problem. It's not that I hate raids or that they take too much time, it's that the dynamic of how they are presented doesn't require skill, it requires manpower above all.

Anybody with enough people could do these raids over time. They may not be the fastest or the best, but they could pull it off. Why? Because the learning curve and "skill" factor of these games is horribly low compared to the factor of loot and time. That's why the raiding game sucks, because the only barrier is manpower, which is total bullshit. Forming a freaking mutual fund is easier than dealing with this type of "game" and that's retarded as well.

Even if we agree with your premise the "suffering" is not spread equally -- the raid organizers/guild leaders/officers take the brunt of it. Most of the people on the raid are sheep (as they should be otherwise it'll be even more like herding cats around). Does that mean the raid organizers should receive the best rewards?

The concept of fun as it's own reward is missing from this discussion.

Very few people here have said that raids are actually fun. The prevailing opinion seems to be that raids are not fun at all, and only worth doing to get stuff.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who think they deserve the best stuff. Any game that is just stuff collection is not worth your time. (Or mine anyway) My sympathy lies with people wanting to PvP and having to put up with raid gear.

Collecting better stuff than other people is a passive-aggessive form of competition, and it only matters if it matters to you - it has no real effect on you if someone else has better gear. But in PvP it does have an effect.

Don't they already?  They pick the targets. They pick the strategies to implement.  They set the recruiting policies.  They pick the raid times. They choose the direction of the guild. Some people enjoy having this sort of power or having this sort of responsibility even if it is just in an online game.  They're the noticeable faces when a guild succeeds.

Heh, you couldn't pay me to be an officer in a raid guild.  No rikey cat herding.

Now that I am sufficiently awake, I'll try to put it in more logical terms. I both like and do not like raiding. I like 5-maning content just as much as I enjoy raiding, but with 5-mans I don't have all the extra hassle. This means that 5-manning is ultimately more fun for me than raiding. The only reason why I raid instead of just 5-man my little heart out is because raiding gets me the phat lewts, and in many ways I am just a lewt whore. If 5-man content got me the same epics I would stop raiding in an instant and settle down in the relaxation of having 4 hand-picked people besides me doing an instance together. Many many current raiders are exactly the same as me, so you'd see a mass exodus from raiding.

Now on a personal level, would I care? No not really. If there's enough 5-man content I'll be satisfied and maybe even happier with the game than I am now. So personally, yes your guys idea gets the stamp of approval from me, 5-man content should give the same epics with the drop numbers simply scaled down by the number of people, or evern scaled down further cause 5-manning things tends to be easier to learn.

This is where the circular logic confusion came in, so let me tell you I'm now going to talk from the Blizzard viewpoint. The reason I'm going to do that is because making unrealistic demands is fun and all, but it doesn't tend to go anywhere.

From the Blizzard point of view, a LOT of effort has gone into the raiding game. I know you guys wont dispute that cause you've bitched about it before. As I also said before raiding is fantastic for stretching out the time people spend on it. There's only a single 5-man dungeon I haven't cleared in 1 go on my first time in, and that was because UD-strat had a nice little 1-shot-only mechanism at the end. And it's not just the difficulty. We're talking 5-man scholos and living-strats pre-nerf. Scaling it down to 5-man makes it so much easier because only 5 people gotta get their heads out of their asses, and there's only so much you can make encounters do when there's 5 people to deal with it. There's also the extra overhead of getting people together, explaining strats to 40 people, getting people to stand in the right spots, and all the overhead big guilds built for loot cause for officers and even normal members.

So with so much effort being put into the raiding game, and with it being such a great timesink for raiders, Blizz would not want to castrate the raiding game. If they make it so the carrot of THE BEST LOOT is no longer there, then they will castrate their raiding game. Aka, it's unrealistic to expect that to happen. OR you will get the equivalent of rank 14 PVP, a massive massive rep grind to make getting exalted with WSG without winning a game and no holidays look like a walk in the park. I'm sorry but this is a MMOG and giving you some cockblock timesink is gonna happen one way or another to keep you subbed. And this one will have to be sufficient that people who would stop raiding decide it's too much hassle to deal with the grind, and stay raiding.

That is why I say the rewards should not be quite as good as those from raiding. It would kill raiding. And maybe you or I will not really care (actually I would because it would probably destroy my guild, but still..), but Blizzard will. So I'll continue my love/hate relationship with raiding and the non-raiders will have to deal with getting epics that close the gap between raiders and non-raiders. I'm sure there will be pieces that will be as good or better than raiding gear and that's good, but you shouldn't be able to get a full suit of equivilent gear IMO. It doesn't even need to be far off either. The raiding 2-handed weapon of destruction can be 8 str and 3 dps higher than the non-raiding 2-hander and all will be well, people call certain raiding items "trash" due to less difference in power than that. But the difference has got to be there.


My reaction would be: "WTF is this crap? Fuck this bullshit, lets just do strat."



Also, the loot is not about epeen, I did the same thing in SINGLE PLAYER Diablo 2. Why? I don't know, but there it is. Oh, and I don't do DM West without a Warlock if I'm just putting together a group. When we were farming west the first thing I did was see if a Warlock wanted to come, if not we did something else.

So if being good at the metagame is a reward in it of itself why should you also get phat l33t on top of that? And as a corollary to that why should those that aren't good at the metagame but happen to be playing with somebody who is get the phat l33t?

I really don't get it - D2 had the ultimate in addictive loot tables. Tougher mobs were more likely to give nice drops. But anything could almost drop off anything. (If it was in it's loot table).

Why some game doesnt adopt this is beyond me. I just loved the randomness.

I'm with you furiously.

But that does happen to an extent with a few items "world drops" is what they're called.

But D2 is king.

Ohh sweet merciful Allah, do I need to raise my right hand for this?  It's a reward for some; my reward is extra content (includes the challenge aspect), grouping with non-tards, and my loot.  Grouping with non-tards I could probably do at a smaller guild level, although going after the end game stuff tends to produce a group of players that knows what they're doing.  So, without the extra content and loot, I really don't have much use for being in a raid guild.  I suppose I do enjoy the meta-game to a degree, but I meta-game the hell out of any MMORPG I'm in.  You should have seen the charts I made for AO  :|

FYI: l33t = leet = elite.  I believe you're looking for "l00t" or "l3wt". nub

Dude...your spelling is the 5ux0rz. Phat l33t? Phat l33t? Damn you, US educational system!!!!111!11one!

Not the main reason. Scaling it down to 5 man primarily makes it easier because Blizzard failed in a fundamental design decision. There are 8 classes per faction, so if a single group can only have 5 people in it, you cannot depend upon any given class ability being present, so you cannot make content that requires people to use their characters' abilities. As a result, the only thing that tends to be in an instance that is set up to allow 5 man groups to run it has the vague concepts of tanking, healing, crowd control and dps, and each are required to such a limited degree so as not to force specific class requirements on each available space. There's never going to be a 5 man instance where you need to sheep an ogre so that the shepherd and his worg will corral it into a pen, because you'd have defined a class requirement for one of the 5 people in the group, and created knock on effects in choices of other participants. Unfortunately Blizzard went ahead and made whole classes and a number of skills available only to one faction, thus compounding their error.

I apologize -- I've been away from IRC and my "l33t" gaming buddies for too long now. It was hard enough back then keeping up with all the lingo (e.g. \/ actually means something) and now I'm feeling totally lost. Like WTH is WTFBBQ? Where did that "BBQ" come from? Are people just adding random letters to acronyms now?

Edit: fixed typo

I have been visiting this community for 2 years now?  You guys still baffle me.

Many of you think you know what you want - but the rest of realize that if you actually got it - you would still be disaffected.

Turn turn turn, long live rock, don't fear the reaper.

And so forth.

There will always be something to complain about.

Complaining about other people complaining never gets old either.

Most of what is required of non organizer/leader/officers on guild raids is less than sheep. It's paper cutouts. It's macros with names. It's mostly sit down, shut up and push your buttons when told you monkeys. Raiders are interchangeable, and yet somehow, people STILL find ways to fuck it up spectacularly.

The amount of work required of a raid leader is the size of the sun when compared to an actual raider, with the raider being the size of an ant on Earth. Leading raids is a punishment sent from God upon those with the ability to bring people together. Good raid tools built into the game only make this slightly less so.

They are fodder, completely interchangeable with bots. I'd say most 40-man raids have about 5-10 necessary people/skillsets/abilities, and the rest are fucking space-takers who bitch loudly about loot. Why can't we just replace those other 30-35 people with hired NPC mercenaries?

Oh, and if I haven't said it today, Fuck Tigole and Furor. Fuck them in their tiny little assholes.

Went on a quick little "raid" with my small guild last night.  It was 9 of us in Strat's UD section.  We went straight through to the guy on the horse that has some permenant aoe aura (terrible with these fictional names.)  We had a not-at-all balanced group (only healers was a druid and my pally.  We only had one warrior so I also had to help tank.)

While we had no trouble (couple deaths including one on our main healer druid,) it was fun due to the smallish group and the good banter back and forth throughout.  Everyone had to be alert at all times (not macro pushers.)

It took all of about an hour and 15 minutes.  I got my tier 0 lightforge belt and a nice quest ring at the end.  I was completely satisfied with this.  I want to go back and do a 5 man group to complete some quests I have too!

This cements my thoughts on small group raiding and instances.  That's what the end game should be about.  The random drops (D2-> yes) and the good natured rolling for them throughout was a lot of fun too (need over greed, etc.)  No DKP or other BS.  There was no fighting each other on rolls, etc.  It was just a good experience all around.

Its really not that raids aren't fun, most encounters ARE fun.  Once or twice, maybe the first half dozen times for the cooler ones.  Its farming instances for months long after they stopped being a challenge so you can take on the next zone thats tedious and unfun.  There is a great sense of accomplishment the first time you take down Ragnaros when a couple weeks earlier you where thinking "how the fuck are we supposed to do this?", then the week after that you down him on your first pull with only a couple deaths and the result wasn't in question at any point during the fight and you realize you need to do this once a week for however long you plan on playing because months for now people are still going to want their tier 2 pants for some god forsaken reason.  Ugh.  Raids don't suck, raiding the same shit for months does.

But what is getting the epics for? It's epeen stuff itself. Right now, only raiders get raid epics. But everyone wants it, even though it's primarily useful only in raids. There's nothing else to do in the game but gain epics. How often did you run Wailing Caverns, or whatever the equivalent Alliance instance was? I ran it three times on my main. I've run MC far more often than that. I don't do raids because the process is fun; I do it for the loot. Or, at least, I realized that the thrill of first kill was fading, and the challenge of solving the encounters was over, and there was nothing left to do but gain loot, and so I quit.

If the casuals got their epic gear in 5-10 man groups, that wouldn't be enough -- because some else has a title, dye, or unique skin that the casual doesn't have. The casuals in our raids groups didn't just want the same opportunities that the hardcore got -- they wanted the same results. Any other schema was unfair. It took the casuals six weeks to get one epic, but they had been in the guild since the day we moved to the server! They were entitled to better gear. 20 raid hours for one epic? No way! That's six weeks!

As long as there's something that they can't have, they'll still want it. They don't want the loot because they want the loot; they want the loot because it's rare. Scarcity creates value. Especially when everyone has seen all the content, and the only thing left to do is repeat content.

As long as rewards are based upon time and not limited by character, then hardcore players will always have more rewards than casual players. If there's cool 5-man loot, the hardcore will have that (in addition to their raid loot), and the only thing separating the hardcore from the casuals is the fact that the hardcore have flowers in their hats -- then the casuals will want that too. It's not "separate but equal"; casual players will always be inferior.

Proposed solutions: (1) something to do other than repeat end-game content for the 50th time, or (2) something that limits rewards by character, such that there are rewards that casuals can get that hardcores cannot.

Necro posting for the win, but I'll bite anyways:

It's all about PvP balance, an item you completely gloss over..

"all about"? My prev post was a response to about half the thread, but even finishing the rest, it seems that suiting different playstyles > balanced PvP. ie, it is in part about PvP balance, but also having 40-mans that require more than 5 brains, and having enough content so that people can 5-man weekly for a year without stabbing themselves.

I'll go look at the forums instead of the main page now, cuz it seems that posting in the threads at the end of Commentary posts is bad form (after a couple days have passed).

No, I'm saying purps are needed by all because they can be used in PvP.  If they couldn't be, then the issue would be silly.  The reality is, the reward for having way to much time to spend in PvE (or PvP) is an IWIN button in PvP, which is stupid.  Take away that one element and the "hardcore l33t raiders" would have the moral high ground in the argument.  The rest of us could just hit max level and pvp for fun without getting 2 shot and graveyard camped by a fully decked out epic PvP that has no real skill minus the fucking ridiculous weapons..


This place has a front page?

> The reality is, the reward for having way to much time to spend in PvE (or PvP) is an IWIN button in PvP, which is stupid.
This is what finally tipped me away from WoW.  Ya, EQ2 is worse, but I joined for PvE.  Hopefully it will tide me over until GW:F.

Be nice cevik. Hes a casual poster. It took him a month to write his post.

WoW really needs to steal one idea from eq2's pvp very quickly. In eq2 every spell and every item has two different sets of stats one for pve one for pvp. They are not tied together at all so there is no need to balance a spell/skill to make it usable in both pvp and pve. If you had this you could easily mudflate encounters all you want and the items needed for it and have separate pvp stats that are sane there as well.

If something turns out to be over powered in pvp they can tweak it and not affect non pvp'ers at all.

In the 1.10 patch if the bable fish translations are right you are going to see a ton of tweaks/nerfs to warriors and hunters that are brought on specifically due to pvp balancing that will also hurt pve where its fine.

kaid

"Rumored changes" post plz...

Hunters aimed and multi-shots being normalized to a 2.8 atk speed.

I don't recall seeing any warrior nerfs, but it looks like the 'translated patch notes' have gone missing from where I saw them posted. 

The only warrior nerfs I can think of are the further gimpage of Sweeping Strikes+Whirlwind (it'll only consume 1 charge and hit 1 target twice instead of consuming 4 charges and hitting 4 targets twice) and intimidating shout capped at 5 targets. I'm not too worried about either tbh.. ss/whirlwind was nerfed/fixed in the last patch, and int-shout fearbombing isn't that hot when half of the horde team can immediately go immune to the fear effect anyway.


-- Z.

Except that execute will now work with Sweeping Strikes.

I think I'm going to have to look at buying a DHC on test and see how much this change increases DPS, if any.  It'll nerf my Bloodseeker and my CSX, but it's not buffing the Ancient Bone Bow any.  Given that aimed shot is still damage+x, I'm thinking BS and CSX will still be better for us non-purpled hunters.

 :-o

DHC is 2.9, iirc so it'll be getting a bit of a nerf.