Cracks starting to show?

[Fordel]

If it's any consolation, I think your Avatar is funny and adorable.



-edit- I spoke engrish gudder.

[Paelos]

I just don't see how pointing out a soul can't solo makes anything more hardcore logically. If soul's were mutually exclusive, then yes, I would see it as limiting. However, given that the game is built on the principle of letting you combine multiple souls into your character makeup, I struggle to see how harder/easier enters into the discussion. If anything I see it was a quality of life issue that would make the game more fun for some people.

[Ingmar]

I haven't played Rift, but from outside all the character stuff sounds noticeably more complicated than WoW's.

[Rokal]

To be fair, Rift is far worse than WOW at the 'static quest experience on rails' thing (I'm not sure if that was this thread or the cataclysm one, it all melts together for me  ). There is exactly one path to get to 50, and quest hubs are gated just like in newWOW (maybe a bit closer to WOTLK than Cata, but definitely have to do them in order within a zone) When you're levelling a second chara in the same faction, you'll be hitting up exactly the same quests in almost the same order.

The other thing to consider is that you really only need to level from 1-50 four times in Rift. The soul system is open enough that you won't want to roll a Bard if you already have an Assassin, etc. In that way it doesn't really need to provide as much of a replayable experience for 1-50. I think the dungeons and the Rifts do a pretty good job at breaking up the quest flow, and with the new LFD tool you should be able to find groups for even the opposite-faction dungeons while leveling. But you're right that the quest structure is the same, I expect it's the sort of stream-lined questing we'll see with any new MMO from here forward.

I just don't see how pointing out a soul can't solo makes anything more hardcore logically. If soul's were mutually exclusive, then yes, I would see it as limiting. However, given that the game is built on the principle of letting you combine multiple souls into your character makeup, I struggle to see how harder/easier enters into the discussion. If anything I see it was a quality of life issue that would make the game more fun for some people.

Yeah, using the word "hardcore" was a mistake. In WoW we've been saying that the hard content catered to hardcore players and ignored casual players, but that has been an incorrect use of the (stupid) terms. Rift is a "harder" game than WoW. In leveling, it's harder and less forgiving. In end-game it is (I've heard) also mostly hard content. You can just switch to a different soul if your Assassin (for example) is having a tough time soloing, but you would need to look outside the game and read forums etc. to figure out what souls were good for soloing. And then you'd need to invest all of your ability points (talent points) into that new tree and whatever two companion trees you pick. This is a huge contrast to WoW where any class can solo and the talent trees are much smaller & straight-forward.

In WoW, Blizzard thought the talent trees had gotten too complicated/difficult for new players. Rift throws 8 51-point talent trees at you, some of which aren't going to let you solo easily, all with tons of choices to make within them, and says "learn fast".

I wanted to try out tanking a dungeon on my rogue so I bought a second soul role and changed my Nightblade into a Riftstalker. Having to invest ~45 points into a talent tree I'd never seen before (and figure out which companion trees I wanted to go with it, since the game doesn't let you dump all of your points into one tree while leveling) was pretty overwhelming.

Edit: also worth noting that, unlike comparing WoW talent trees, Rift soul trees share no abilities in common. It's not as simple as making room for the 4-6 abilities you got from the Discipline tree among your baseline skills, it's more like switching to a different class entirely when that character is already level 40.

[Nevermore]

I haven't played Rift, but from outside all the character stuff sounds noticeably more complicated than WoW's.

Complicated doesn't mean hardcore, though.  Guild Wars has the most complicated skill system I've seen in an MMO (and most fun, imo) and it is in no way hardcore.

[Merusk]

I haven't played Rift, but from outside all the character stuff sounds noticeably more complicated than WoW's.

It's really not complicated just a little more complex.  It's pretty similar to solutions we've bandied about for some of WoW's problems.

You've got an "Archtype" (War, Mage, Rogue, Cleric) and those have 7 different flavor of souls that fit into the Healer, DPS (Melee or Ranged I think most types have at least one of each), Tank roles.  The Warrior doesn't get a healer and the Mage doesn't get a tank.

After that it's pick 3 and choose what talents you want.  So Tank/ DPS/ Heal or Tank/DPS/ DPS, etc.  Of course certain souls have better synergy with others but so long as you focus on one you won't be gimped.

Also, you get 5 specs instead of WOW's 2.

[Rokal]

Rokal is faux-hardcore. He's into the raiding game deeply enough to be 12/12 in normals, but doesn't want to have to do heroic raids because they're too hard. Oh irony.

I answered a theoretical question to point out that someone still gets screwed, I didn't say it was what I wanted out of the game. We're going to start hard modes this week, and while I don't expect us to get very far I'm also not asking for them to be any easier. If an average raid guild can get to 12/12 normal shortly before the next content patch, I'd say that's pretty good difficulty tuning.

Yes, my enjoyment of the game depends entirely on having gear 3-4 item levels higher than everyone else, you read my post perfectly  

So why do you think that anyone running heroics should be shafted compared to raiders?  Don't they deserve a full 13 ilevels for doing it hardmode?  On second though, why even hand out 359 gear to raiders?  Shouldn't they be getting one or two drops of 346 gear per five people, just like the other endgame?

Man, you guys focus on the stupidest shit :p I didn't say "I don't want 5-man players to have gear as good as mine" I said "I don't want heroic gear to be as good as raid gear because it will make raids easier". If my guild killed Mag'maw and then wiped to Omnitron and called it a week, but came back the next week with full 359 (raid level gear from 5-mans), it would make the normal raids easier and I thought the difficulty as-is really hit the sweet spot.

The size of the upgrade as a motivation for doing content is fairly trivial. It matters much more that players feel they are getting upgrades period, and that they are feeling like their character is improving. Why do you care if you get 4 ilvl upgrades or 40 ilvl upgrades, as long as the content that comes out after is balanced for what you have? Here is another gear design that I'd be fine with, for example:

Normal 5-mans: 342
Heroic 5-mans: 346
Normal Raids: 350
Heroic Raids: 354

The obvious down-side to this is that content never really nerfs itself. If your guild barely scraped by on Mag'maw worms, gear isn't going to soften the fight much for you next week or the week after. It has the positive side-effect of keeping content relevant longer though. If normal mode Firelands dropped 358 gear, it wouldn't be completely stupid to get more 350/354 gear in BoT/BWD/To4W if you were having problems on a Firelands boss.

[Paelos]

I answered a theoretical question to point out that someone still gets screwed, I didn't say it was what I wanted out of the game. We're going to start hard modes this week, and while I don't expect us to get very far I'm also not asking for them to be any easier. If an average raid guild can get to 12/12 normal shortly before the next content patch, I'd say that's pretty good difficulty tuning.

You're not in an average guild, you nutcase. The best case scenario of numbers you can get says that only 30% of guilds have gone 12/12 if they've killed 1 boss. The worst case numbers say it's more like 7% of the overall playbase that are done with normals.

[Rokal]

There is still time for people to get 12/12 before Firelands. Where are you getting those numbers though, I'd be curious to see what % of raid guilds are at 10/12 or 11/12?

The early balance is what I agree could have been a little easier, or at least had a more obvious target. Not to beat a dead horse, but for example your guild probably could have done 12/12 before Firelands if they didn't dissolve, and maybe they wouldn't have if the game directed them to Council or Halfus first, or if Mag'maw was a little easier when you were first learning it. The fight would have been a great way to dip your foot in the Cata raid waters if the worms had 1/2 the HP they have now.

[Ingmar]

You have to keep in mind that any sensible analysis of where raid guilds are will include guilds that raided last expansion but are 0/12 now.

[Paelos]

http://wow.guildprogress.com/

http://www.wowprogress.com/

Knock em around. Enjoy. In any case, people aren't getting past the final bosses in the raids yet with any regularity, although Cho'gal is the closest to being average.

[SurfD]

Do those sites only track "raiding" guilds though? Or do they track every guild that ever had at least one member with the guild tag step into a raid and kill something?  Because there is probably a HUGE statistical gap betwen tracking only "raiding" guilds, and tracking say, leveling guilds (the guilds who mass recruit people to sponge off the Cash Flow Perks, but dont put together an active raid group), or PvP focused guilds with the occasional member who steps into a raid as a time killer.

There are probably tonnes of guilds out there who dont have any kind of regular raid team, with a member or two here or there who pug raids and kill a few bosses each week.  If those sites are tracking those guilds, that could severely skew the metric.

Do they have an option to Filter to show only guilds making a "guild run" style kill (where 80% or more of the raid team is from the same guild)?

[Paelos]

Oh and FYI Rokal, your guild is ranked 38th on your server for being 12/12 out of 140 tracked raiding guilds.

On my server 50 guilds have gone 12/12 out of 177 (28% roughly)

Yours is also in that percentile.

EDIT: At the end of the day Surf, it means that 33% that actually tried and killed something have finished the normal raiding content. There's not a really good raiding metric for covering how many characters/total pop you see.
 

[Rokal]

I don't understand why one website has Magmaw at 30% and the other has Mag'maw at 94%. Does the first website include all guilds/guilds that have only killed Algaloth?

[Paelos]

I don't understand why one website has Magmaw at 30% and the other has Mag'maw at 94%. Does the first website include all guilds/guilds that have only killed Algaloth?

One includes all guilds across all content in time. The other includes the active guilds in the expansion. It gives you an even comparison of the raiding current and the raiding historically.

[Rokal]

At the end of the day Surf, it means that 33% that actually tried and killed something have finished the normal raiding content. There's not a really good raiding metric for covering how many characters/total pop you see.
 

It's really a bad way to measure it then. Assuming the first website is measuring all lvl 85 characters, if you looked at my lvl 85 characters you'd get a 33% statistic too even though I'm raiding in this expansion because only one out of my 3 level 85s has done any rading. Trying to measure how many players are doing the raid content is really impractical unless you are Blizzard and can distinguish characters from accounts for metrics.

Edit: Ah, the first website measures all guilds, not all characters. You still run into some of the problems that SurfD mentioned. For example, my old raid guild is pretty much dead, but most of those players moved onto other guilds or quit. None-the-less, the dead guild still counts towards the metric even though most of the players have moved on. I still have one character in a leveling guild me and some RL friends created back in Vanilla, and again that guild is also counted towards the metric.

The second website is a little more useful since it cuts out most shell/leveling guilds, but it doesn't give you a picture of guilds that tried to raid but are 0/13, and it includes guilds that may only have a member or two that did some PuG raiding. Including the first would lower the overall percentages, but excluding the second would probably make the numbers seem less disproportionate between Mag'Maw and Nefarian, etc.

[Lightstalker]

On wowtrack there are 12x the 10man guilds as there are 25man guilds - or 83% of the raiding playerbase is in the 10-man format.  This is looking at guilds who have dropped  bosses in Cataclysm though the 25man guilds can also count in the 10man rankings (which would inflate the 10man success rates given the current state of raiding and change the proportion of playes participating in 10-man raiding but whatever).

25man guilds have been done with normal modes for months, as many others have said.  There are only 8 heroic modes that are below 50% success rate for 25-man guilds and 90% of 25man guilds have dropped Nef.

Contrast that with 10man guilds now.   Cho'Gall is under 50% success rate for 10man guilds, and only 27% of 10man guilds have dropped Nef. 

Contrasting one's 10man guild against 'average' 25man guilds leads you to think anyone/everyone is bored with the easy advance through Cata content.  Looking at the bulk of the playerbase, however, one can see that most of the raiding guilds are not finding end-boss success in Cata.  Less than 40% of the raiding guilds in the game have dropped Nef, despite the 90% success rate for 25-man guilds.  So yes, the hard core are bored with the expansion and no the casuals are not having much success - certainly in historic context like with Naxx in Wrath (where my 10-man guild accidentally attempted Anub on 25-man difficulty without noticing anything was wrong our first night in).

[Merusk]

The 25's are the hardcore of the hardcore.  They're expecting that when the legendary weapons come out they'll only be available in the 25 raid format (as was hinted at by Blizz in the run-up to Cata).   This dedication explains a lot of their greater success rate.

[Miasma]

25 man raids have more room for error, they are just easier than 10 man.  Any bunch of people doing heroics are as hard core as they come so the success of 25man versus 10man can only be explained by 25man being easier.

[Lightstalker]

Some 25-man fights are easier, some are harder as wowtrack shows (10-6 split with 25man being harder, actually).  In general the fights that are harder in 10man are much harder than the fights that are harder in 25man, that's due to the margin for error in the forced composition with tanks and healers displacing a much larger number of DPS than the 25-man composition.  Looking at Nef, a fight that's much harder in 10-man, 3 Interruptors and 3 healers is 60% of your raid in 10 man and only 24% in 25man.

The increased challenge in 25-man may also be an artifact of progression order - 25 man guilds are more likely to be in there before strategies and walkthroughs have been created and won't have a successful plan to follow along to victory. 

The self-selection into 25-man raiding guilds is probably a much larger contribution to the success rate than the challenge level of the particular fights.  The hardest of the hard-core are in 25-man raids because that's where the world-ranked guilds are.

[caladein]

This tier has a decent mix of fights that are harder in one size or the other.  Also, this tier was designed with both sizes in mind so fights that emphasize spreading out in a lattice are relatively few and far between, unlike in Wrath where marquee fights like Mimiron and LK weren't nearly as challenging in 10m as in 25m because Blizzard made no effort to get them scale gracefully between sizes.

Really though, 25m is the prestige bracket and so it generally attracts the best players.  These very good 25m guilds are also much more likely to be an established group from the previous expansion(s) compared to 10m strict being a relatively rare and relatively new option for among very good players.

[Paelos]

It's a really bad way to measure it then.

No it's really not. Tossing numbers out of your ass and calling your 38th ranked out of 140 guild "average," THAT'S a shitty way to measure it. Me using actual numbers to give you the best case scenario being that 30-35% of guilds are done with regular raiding is pretty on point.

See here's the thing. I'm not going to doom and gloom you just because things fell apart on my end. There's an actual problem with the game that can, has, and will be verified by tracking, financials, and statistical data. It's out there.

Now you can blow sunshine up our asses all day because you like the game as is, but you're going to get painted into a corner here when things are tuned up so much that even people who want to opt-in to the system aren't getting through it. At the end of the day you're just going to have to admit that what you like about the game is slowly going to bleed it into a niche. Blizzard hasn't made good decisions thus far, and all past indicators show they will slowly turn the ship around when the other shoe drops.

[Lantyssa]

Paelos, there are still people that believe Trammel was a travesty.  There's no point in trying to explain it further.

[Rokal]

There are plenty of problems with both your sets of numbers, and likely plenty of time left until 4.2. I wouldn't be surprised to see that number creep up to 45-50% by 4.2, despite the shortcomings of both websites. Nef and Al'akir aren't that much harder than Cho'gal, and Cho'gal is already approaching those numbers.

Additionally, if you look at the bottom chunk of those 140 guilds being tracked on my server, you are going to find a lot of guilds that aren't actually raid guilds. It will be guilds where a few members have killed a boss playing in a PuG. That's the big problem with the second website. If I logged onto my alt in my old leveling guild and joined a PuG raid for BoT, suddenly my regular guild would be 38/141.

[Malakili]

Paelos, there are still people that believe Trammel was a travesty.  There's no point in trying to explain it further.

I feel like we don't even need to bring that sort of thing into it.   We're quibbling about the % of guilds who have beat raid content and the difficulty of heroic dungeons when it comes down to it.  Hell, I've been on again off again in support of more difficult Heroics in this thread and I still freely admit its worse for their sub numbers.

[Paelos]

There are plenty of problems with both your sets of numbers, and likely plenty of time left until 4.2. I wouldn't be surprised to see that number creep up to 45-50% by 4.2, despite the shortcomings of both websites. Nef and Al'akir aren't that much harder than Cho'gal, and Cho'gal is already approaching those numbers.

Additionally, if you look at the bottom chunk of those 140 guilds being tracked on my server, you are going to find a lot of guilds that aren't actually raid guilds. It will be guilds where a few members have killed a boss playing in a PuG. That's the big problem with the second website. If I logged onto my alt in my old leveling guild and joined a PuG raid for BoT, suddenly my regular guild would be 38/141.

And? They were guilds with people who actively tried to raid for whatever reason, pug or no. My guild wouldn't be on that list because it didn't kill anything even though it tried for a month. I do love you calling into question the numbers coming from data-mined information that Blizzard freely publishes on it's own site though, presented to the hardcore for the purposes of ranking them. Perhaps you can present your own set of numbers to dispute that?

Oh, that's right, all you have is random conjecture, anecdotal stories, and sunshine! That's good stuff, too. I hear they are this close to adding that as evidence in a court of law.

[Rokal]

Well, I do love Sunshine.

Most of the bottom guilds of the 140 weren't *guilds* that tried to raid. They didn't have raiding as a goal. They were a few members of guilds that, as a whole, do not raid. Asking if the content is too hard because they are only 1 or 2/12 is like asking if the rated battlegrounds system is too hard to succeed in because only one person in my guild cared about PVP enough to work towards this achievement. If you were tracking how many guilds got the guild commander achievement that had at least one commander, or what their progress was, we'd be counted in that total even though we as a guild aren't working towards it. The fact is, most of us just don't care about PvP, and rated battlegrounds is not one of the goals our guild is structured around. There are plenty of guilds that have the same attitude about raiding. Trying to determine whether raid content is too hard by measure % of guilds that have completed each fight isn't simple if your data includes guilds that don't raid as a guild, where one member may have killed Halfus in a PuG and then never bothered again. Hell, some of the guilds on that list for my server don't even exist anymore.

Again, if I joined a PuG raid on my leveling guild alt (that has me and two inactive players in it), that doesn't in any way represent that another guild found the raid content after the first 3 bosses too hard. What it represents is that trying to get accurate numbers for this discussion out of either of those two websites is flawed.

[Ingmar]

I bet a bunch of them did raid as guilds last expansion, though.

[Rokal]

If you include guilds that tried raiding but failed (0/12), the overall % numbers would be lower. But what I'm arguing is that the gulf between say, Omnitron and Nefarian isn't actually as wide as it seems based on those numbers because of the flaws inherent to the way the data was collected. If your guild succeeded at content at all, it is probably capable of going 12/12 before 4.2. I was arguing that if the intro bosses were easier or if the game directed you to Halfus or Council instead of Mag'maw, guilds that were 0/12 may have become 1/12 and had enough success to encourage them to continue. It followed a nice & gradual difficulty curve (but not necessarily an obvious one unless you asked around), so whenever you got one boss down everyone knew you were capable of doing the next one too. I'm fairly certain that kind of gradual difficulty curve will be missing in Firelands :p

[Lightstalker]

Wowtrack is looking only at guilds with kill achievements.  Among guilds that successfully raid, 90% take Nef on 25man and 28% take Nef on 10man.  In the 10-man data 95% kill Magmaw (Omnotron at 91%) and 27% kill Nef, clearly there is a wide gulf in the 10-man realm and the difference from 25-man is probably due to the self-selection of super competative raiders into the much flatter 25-man category (100% Magmaw 90% Nef). 

I'm not sure how/why anyone would argue otherwise.

It doesn't matter where you started, Cata raids don't let you carry as many people as Naxx did and that literally means less progression for more people.  Raids can't rely on their all-stars to see them through anymore, and that is the unfun change.  To go way back, Hyjal was an 8 man instance with 17 ablative players to soak damage and distract the NPCs.  MC was about the same with 8 important people and 32 guys on follow.   Cata still requires those 8 guys to really be popping, but in a 10 man group.

[Sheepherder]

I didn't say "I don't want 5-man players to have gear as good as mine"...

...As long as those subhumans don't fuck up the exquisite balance of my master race party place by getting a fair shot at the same gear, because even though I totally do this for the challenge if you gave me a path of least resistance I'd be compelled to take it.

It's like you don't truly understand why everyone else thinks you're a bit of a knob.  Me?  I know exactly why everyone thinks I'm a knob.

[WindupAtheist]

Meanwhile...

"Rated Battlegrounds continue to be a big flop and nobody is doing them even after we terminated the 15 player versions. Rather than try to address this by making Rated more attractive, we're just going to slap you with a 1/3 penalty to your Conquest points if you don't do them. Fuck you, you faggots have been getting away light in the grinding department lately anyway. We designed it, and you cocksuckers are going to play it!"

Seriously, the time card is right here in my drawer and I can't be bothered typing the code in. Do these things ever expire? Can I use it years from now if they ever pull their heads out of their asses?

[Azazel]

Pretty sure you can use it much later/forever - they're retail products after all, so who knows when they will get into consumers' hands. I had a couple sit for about 18 months before I used them.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'd do battlegrounds every single day if they had a personal rating system. Sorry but fuck this eSport bullshit.  You don't have to set up a ten man team in advance of a match to play SC2 so why do they think people suddenly want to do it in wow?

[Rendakor]

Because the hardest act (and thus the most rewarding) in WoW will always be finding 9 (or 24, or 39) other people interested in doing the same thing as you, who are also not retarded.