Season 2 feels great, but it’s may do lasting damage to the average raiding guild.
Whats happening
- The new gearing system plus the lower difficulty of Normal and Heroic combined are resulting in a very short raid tier.
- I’m in a very average AoTC raiding guild.
- Usually takes us 2-3 weeks to clear normal, 6-8 weeks to clear heroic.
- This tier we cleared normal week 1 (one shotting almost all bosses) and in week 3 were progressing H Sarcareth, will most likely kill in week 4.
- From everything I’ve seen, this is a pretty universal phenomenon of DF season 2
Why this is a problem?
- Our guild’s seasonal goal of AOTC is going to be over in less than a month.
- Raiding is the glue that holds most guilds together. When progression ends, people start leaving, quitting, taking breaks.
- M+ is so much more rewarding, farming raid post-progression feels kinda pointless.
- Normal and Heroic are too easy for us this tier.
- Our guild is feeling underserved by the content this tier.
Just do Mythic Raiding then
- This is the common response I hear while talking about this problem.
- The barrier to entry for mythic is not skill, its the extra admin and roster management that comes with Mythic.
- We are adults lives. We can’t always hit exactly 20 raiders with attendance realities.
- We want to let our raiders take a night off if they aren’t feeling well or have family obligations.
- We don’t want to over recruit then have to bench our friends when everyone shows up.
- We’re have a tight nit group and culture and don’t really want to bring in a bunch of new people to keep up a roster of exactly 20.
So what then?
- Personally, I would like to see a return to more challenging Normal and Heroic mode, but I know many are enjoying the accessibility this season.
- If DF Season 2 is the template going forward, we need to see some changes in the raid difficulty system to account for guild that have the skill to clear content, but don’t want to deal with the hoops of Mythic.
- Maybe this means a new difficulty between Heroic and Mythic with a flex raid size.
- Maybe this means opening up flex size for Mythic after the hall of fame is filled.
- Maybe the gearing system was just too generous, and needs to be slowed down a bit.
- Or maybe Season 2 is just a fluke, and future seasons will have tighter difficulty tuning.
In Conclusion
Raid difficulty comes from 2 sources:
- Gamplay difficulty (how hard are the bosses)
- Organization effort (how much work outside of raid do you have to do to participate)
In the past, both of these sources more or less lined up. Mythic 's gameplay was so hard that it only attracted those willing to put in the extra organizational effort. For everyone else, normal and heroic offered enough of a challenge to keep them satisfied without having to deal with managing an optimal roster of exactly 20.
This season however, the drop in difficulty has left the later group unsatisfied by the ease of the gameplay difficulty. Their only option to access more of a raid challenge is to also take on the burden of organizational difficulty, which just isn’t fun or appealing to most players.
Does challenging gameplay have to come with a high barrier to entry and low accessibility? I don’t think it does. Mythic Plus has proven you can offer a challenging gameplay to any player while still being accessible and easy to jump into.
4 Likes
I had this thought the other day and was thinking of making a topic on the matter, so thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Let me add my own context first. I run a mid-tier mythic raiding guild. We aim to clear AOTC relatively quickly (typically week 5-6 in previous tiers, also working on H Sarkareth now), and then clear approx 50% of mythic.
Mythic does have it’s own issues, including lockouts, and static group sizes.
So this was my train of thought. Keep the tuning SIMILAR to this tier.
Step 1) Remove LFR (Stay with me, don’t freak out solo-players)
Step 2) Enable solo-queueing for Normal Difficulty.
Step 3) Unlock Mythic lockouts (be able to kill mythic bosses with multiple groups in a week).
Optional Step 4) Remove static 20-man requirement from mythic
Step 5) Implement Hardcore Difficulty.
Hardcore Difficulty details:
- Static group size. Doesn’t have to be 20, but consistent for all groups.
- No increase in loot ilvl (can either drop same as mythic or no loot at all)
- Only really for groups really wanting to test themselves against the hardest possible content.
- No “Pushover mythic bosses” (This tier has 4 of them.)
- No class raid buffs (it’s called hardcore for a reason) eliminating “mandatory raid spots”
- Released 2-3 weeks after N/H/M (Becomes the RWF?) To allow for proper tuning based on CURRENT numbers from players in all difficulties and doesn’t allow people to skip the “regular difficulties” and adds a new challenge for top players/guilds to engage with.
I’m probably forgetting something important in this idea, so let me know what you think, but I think the tuning of this patch is honestly a step in the right direction… IF some (or all) of these types of changes are added.
3 Likes
Something like that could work. having a difficulty that’s just about the challenge and not the loot, is interesting, but wouldn’t be for the demo Im talking about.
Remove static 20-man requirement from mythic
This is the main pain point I think needs some looking at.
Historically it more or less broke down like this:
LFR
- Gamplay: Very Easy
- Organizational effort: None (queable)
Normal
- Gameplay: Easy
- Organizational effort: Easy (Puggable with any roster)
Heroic
- Gameplay: Medium
- Organizational effort: Medium (Minimal roster requirements, but need coordination)
Mythic
- Gamplay: Hard
- Organizational effort: Hard (Need exactly 20, organized roster to cover buffs, hight level of coordination).
This has worked our pretty well, as most guilds in the normal-heroic range are happy to not have to spend as much effort organizationally, while still getting to experience gameplay that matches their skill level. This season however the gameplay difficulty seems to have been dropped an entire level across the board:
LFR
- Gamplay: Very Easy
- Organizational effort: None (queable)
Normal
- Gameplay: Very Easy
- Organizational effort: Easy (Puggable with any roster, flex size)
Heroic
- Gameplay: Easy
- Organizational effort: Medium (Minimal roster requirements, need coordination, flex size)
Mythic
- Gamplay: Medium-Hard
- Organizational effort: Hard (Need exactly 20, organized roster to cover buffs, hight level of coordination).
Its felling like there is no decent gameplay challenge in raid this season without having to take on the burden of managing a mythic roster, which can feel like a second job.
1 Like
I think where the gearing speed and raid difficulty is concerned, it’s worth asking how much the current focus on (and ease of access to upgrades from) M+ influenced this. Aberrus is without a doubt an easier raid than a lot of its predecessors, but at the same time kneecapping the new upgrade system would only make it so there’s even less of a focus in raiding.
1 Like
Yeah I know it wasn’t really what you were going for, but this seemed like an appropriate thread to add my thoughts to on the matter.
I definitely agree that the difficulty is less this tier than previous tiers.
I do generally agree with the sentiment that Normal serves no real purpose atm, it is not a progression space for groups, nor is it a solo queue scenic experience like LFR. having 4 difficulties is also potentially part of the problem as it increases the pace of gear acquisition, and ilvl scaling each new tier/season.
I would prefer LFR/Normal to be a combined singular difficulty, and the current difficulty of heroic split into 2 difficulties, the first 6ish heroic bosses being the rough benchmark for the lower of the 2, and the last 2 heroic/ first 3 mythic bosses being the rough benchmark for the upper of the 2.
The past tiers where heroic endbosses were significantly harder in Shadowlands made this problem very clear, there is a “missing middle” and a “doubled up floor”. The difficulties are either too easy where mechanics either dont exist or dont need to be learned at all to succeed, until heroic and mythic separation jump occurs where a massive wall (which then requires later nerfs) is placed infront of players who did not have a smooth learning curve preparing them for a gradual increase in difficulty.
As many has raised previously in this thread, there needs to be a reconsideration of difficulties if we are to keep the current upgrade system.
As it stands now, the only point of LFR is that you can queue it. The difficulty of normal has made it trivial to do, it’s just a matter of joining a group via the group finder instead of queuing. I went in blind as a tank on week 2 doing nothing except reading the “tank warnings” in the dungeon journal and we had 1 wipe up until Sarkareth where the group split due to time constraints.
My own opinion is that LFR should be removed in favor of a 1-player queued story mode which is released in full at the same time as the rest of the difficulties. Make normal queueable like LFR is now and allow for premade groups as well. Keep HC as it is and as I’m not a mythic player, I’m not gonna chime in on what changes should be made there (though a lacker group-size policy and not being locked with your group would be a great start).
The above solution would in my opinion provide a good middle ground for many players:
Story Mode:
- Removes the currently highly unnecessary timegating from the story for those who don’t play LFR for gear
- Everyone in WoW gets to experience the raid, regardless of their commitment level
- This doesn’t have to be all bosses and it doesn’t need to drop gear (to avoid forcing someone to play it more than once).
- It could even provide an opportunity to “quest” through the raid.
Normal:
- Queueable version/normal group version dropping the same gear but sharing lockouts
- Would enable “speed runs” for those that want to do “only hc+ geared people because of trinket/tier-sets” but keep the door open for people who don’t have more than a few hours a week to simply queue or people who simply want to do a selection of bosses
- Blizzard doesn’t have to do two boss difficulties for group content. LFR/Normal is in a weird spot with having abilities remove or completely nullified.
HC:
- With one less difficulty to consider, tuning between normal/hc/mythic could be tighter
Mythic (from a HC pug player who would want to try):
- Remove group-size restrictions or allow for 10-man/20-man (?)
- Remove group-lockout