A lot of posts about the work involved, which wasn’t my argument. We’ve been told that flex raids are a technical limitation of the classic/era platform that SoD is working on. I’m just suggesting that while there may be some limitation on implementing it the same way (i.e. selecting a raid size prior to zoning in), that doesn’t prevent it from being implemented in a different way (my suggestion of an NPC triggering the spawn of an entire raid’s worth of trash and bosses that are set up for that size raid).
Does that mean that some of the mechanics are different? sure. Would it take more work? Of course. But, again, my point being that IF raid size is what is fracturing the player base, isn’t that work worth it?
Your correct, this version doesn’t allow it, but they said it is possible to transfer it to it to make it capable. But they just don’t have the resources or the coders to do it on their dev team. Since their dev team is only 15ish people compared to retails 500.
If someone of authority says it’s a technical limitation, then it’s out of their hands. Some game designers might be software engineers, but “upgrading the engine” is the job for software engineers – not game designers. Game Designers design the game, not the engine. This is no different from Ion claiming “armor dyeing” is currently a technical limitation in WoW.
No, to be blunt. It’s not that simple. Here’s an example:
WoW players have been clamming for armor dyeing and player housing. Let’s explore which one is more likely to happen first, if at all.
Armor Dyeing would require a low-level change (read: Digging deeps into some of the oldest, most sacred code in the software). We’d likely see a brand new way to render the textures to your screen. Artists would need to add meshes and new layers to flat textures for literally 20 years of content. This would be an ungodly overhaul and would most likely mean new art cannot be created while the upgrade is in progress. No new art means no new content.
Player Housing would require brand new code to be built atop existing code. They’d need to add supporting systems and create new art for all the assets, such as icons, textures, and 3D meshes. It would be far more complicated than the Garrison system, and that complicated task likely killed WOD.
So, with Armor Dyeing, you get nothing new for a long time, and artists need to do their best to create a proper “flattened texture” in default coloring. On the other hands, player housing would be new to WoW and further develops the game. So, we’re going to get player housing long before we get armor dyeing.
Now, why this rant on armor dyeing and player housing? Both of these ideas are extremely popular and serve a huge number of players. Player Housing is a brand new way (in WoW) to create a moment of player expression. Armor Dyeing falls under transmog, which is a massive part of endgame progression for many players.
Now, does SOD raiding have this crowd appeal? Simply put: No, it doesn’t. It’s a mini game of a mini game of a psuedo-remastered 20 year old game. All innovation, rightfully, goes to Retail. It’s not that SOD is suffering from 20man raids. Sunken Temple might be a tad hard; a “level up” raid being 20man doesn’t really work in Phase 4+. But that isn’t why SOD is weakening. It’s because the casual experience is mediocre at best. STV/Blood Moon, Sunken Temple, and Incursions. There simply isn’t much to do on SOD at this time.
In short/TL;DR: SOD is a mini game. Innovation should be focused on Retail. SOD is an experiment – a successful one – and it should cater to the interests of its core audience. Flexible raids, while good in many respects, simply isn’t “In the spirit of Classic” and therefore does not belong in SOD.
A better way would be to keep the same amount of trash but boost the characters (like in Beta/Gamma Halls of Lightning; seriously…that was the most fun I’ve ever had running a dungeon).
Like you could tie it to various allies…
((Far warning I’ll probably butcher the spelling of these.))
MC: Hydraxian Waterlords
BWL: Red Dragonflight
AQ: Bronze Dragonflight
ZG: Zandalar’s Loa gods (think some are still alive at this point?)
Naxx: The Aspects (‘by our powers combined…’)
Then use the same system that Retail has for determining the ‘stack’ on the Empowerment Buff. – I’m sure they’ve figured out how to avoid it being cheesed by now.
SoD needs some sort of flex raiding system. 40 man raids will not be able to be filled by the majority of guilds. Even more so after the massive population drop we have seen over the last phase.
Your OP didn’t really suggest what you implied here.
So, focusing on this then.
The issue is the you need to have systems support the content. Using your Ony1/Ony2/Ony3 example, a SQL batch for a custom creature on a private server is SQL 101. Copying over a script, likely in C# or C++, is simply not on the same level. Changing the underlying code your game engine is built upon comes with extremely high risk.
It’s the same issue with “Cross-Faction Guilds” in Dragonflight. They’re still working out the bugs for this system change. But it’s not for a lack of trying or lack of skill, the underlying code of the game was built with factions hardcoded into the game.
Likely, Classic Era/SOD is built with certain code which all other code “assumes” certain hardcoded values or ideas. It’s possible they simply never intended for flexible raids to exist, and thus cannot retroactively re-tune the game and all its game tables fairly.
You might not have been around for it, but there was a time where “the entire game got re-tuned” (maybe it was the big squish?) and, to keep it short: All creature tuning was refactored. It was a mess where they used complex scripts to do most of the heavy-lifting. But with a game as big and old as WoW, there were A LOT of creatures that still hit for their old values, usually at the detriment of player experience. A low-level creature that used hardcoded values would straight up 1-shot players. Blizzard relied on player feedback to find these stragglers and would fix them manually.
Low-level changes are extremely risky. Technical limitations aside, it may not be worth the risk.
You sound ignorant here, so here is me giving you a chance to clarify. What do YOU think they mean by technical limitations? I can virtually guarantee whatever you think it is not what they meant.
Straight up, I probably don’t have this right either, but as a developer I read “we will have to retrofit the raiding structure from a different version of wow (which in itself is likely a massive undertaking) and then recode every raid to work within that framework.”
That’s not something you do in a seasonal server. That’s the type of baseline infrastructural stuff you do up front to set up the entire project to use it. That’s not what happened here and claiming BS at this point is foolish.
If this was Classic+, I am certain they would consider this effort worthwhile and they will have put in the work prior to announcing the project. It is too late in this project to even consider starting that retrofit. It was too late in the project in February when they made the statement about technical limitations. But hey, Belzor knows better. What a complete joke.
Yes, your personal subjective reason is why SoD has lower population and nothing else external or internal caused it. Only your personal idea can solve it.
You really think a team of 12 devs are going to make a flex scaling system for SoD when, as we saw with sunken temple, it’s already hard enough to get the scaling right for a raid with a fixed player number? For all the new spins that they are putting into an old game mode, there is already plenty of work for such a small team.