Play a single player game instead.
MMOs are for playing with other people, and I assume, the game, will be designed to motivate people to play with others.
And if you don’t like this model, which is fair, just play one of the many single player games out there instead of trying to turn this into one.
Unfortunately, this is just the nature of the beast.
It’s gonna be true in many team-based pursuits, from Sunday softball leagues to amateur theatre plays. These formats simply work best with specific numbers of participants, either by necessity or design.
It does suck, and it is one of primary challenges faced by any guild trying to balance prog and play time.
I also think there’s merit to the claim that guilds would sit players if reducing the raid size resulted in less difficulty, which would effectively increase the number of players who miss out. Even if it was 1 or 2 per team it would simply be a net negative.
Not sure there’s a good solution to this one. Our team tries to be fair as possible by getting everyone in for at least half a night on prog, so that absences are easier to address and more people get to play. It’s not perfect, but I don’t think there’s truly a better answer.
We need to remove weekly mythic raid lock. This is the big problem.
If someone misses raid, we can’t fill a spot. I know even if I was locked to my guild I’d help a friend in need on a boss for the fun of it.
Then pugs could complete CE too. The world would be a better place without mythic raid lock out.
The better answer is just removing the raid lockout. Then you could have a smaller bench to begin with, because you pug a player in an emergency. Additionally, your bench players would still get to kill mythic bosses because they would be able to go and pug the bosses they were benched for. (or your guild could run a 2nd run with some alts/mains who were absent/pugs etc).
The mythic lockout destroys the ability to pug mythic because your run is over the minute anyone leaves for any reason, since nobody is going to join a run in progress and get locked out of the easy bosses (and indeed anyone who has already killed any boss that week can’t join your pug at all).
I think a good way could be when RWF contests comes around, it’s statically locked at 20 as normal. Once the top 3 or 5 or whatever number is magical enough, release the lock and allow it to flex between 18-22.
That flex would be the new natural state of Mythic raiding allowing some wiggle room for guilds to plan for unforeseen raiding issues. As it stand, Mythic raiding format is too static for today’s gameplay. OP made very good points regarding the issues and while i am not a mythic raider, i feel like having some sort of little compromise will help the health and that aspect of raiding to be a bit more comfortable for everyone.
Not going to play solo, but will make sure I stay miles away from toxic guilds and will continue to spread the word so other do the same
Then petition for content difficult enough to warrant it to be added into the game.
Every “Add myth gear” comment I see isn’t about adding myth level solo content, it’s about adding myth gear to existing solo content that’s nowhere near the difficulty of other myth content.
Most of the population would lose their mind if Mage Tower type content (at release difficulty) was the bar for Mythic gear from solo content, which would need to be a starting point for any type of serious conversation about this.
File this under “things they think they want but actually don’t”.
Here’s my problem with your feelings on the issue. I might express this poorly, and I might also be wrong, but I hope you can appreciate the heart of what I’m expressing.
Warcraft uses a difficulty system that subverts almost everything video and computer game players are exposed to in most games, including other MMOs.
If I choose a lower difficulty in a car racing sim, my car still goes as fast as other difficulties, my opponents are slower. If I earn a new car from winning something, it goes the same speed on all difficulties. If I play a fighting sim, or sports sim, my player’s stats are equal between difficulties, only opponents are less powerful.
Lower difficulties do not reward lower quality rewards, and that allows those players to feel accomplished while also enjoying the full force of whatever power they are wielding.
Warcraft not only limits the rewards, but doubles down on the difficulty. So not only are you fighting far more powerful opponents, you’re doing it with inferior gear.
Before you have a mental breakdown, I do not think LFR should reward myth track gear, but I do think that everyone should be afforded reasonable access to that gear, regardless of difficulty so that players can both enjoy the power and use it to tackle tougher content.
Again, just a personal opinion. I would be interested in hearing anyone who feels otherwise to express out loud how much their self-worth is governed by what other players have.
If your big defense is “bad players with good gear will get into my runs,” then not only do I think you are clueless because it’s already happening and just like you tell others when they list their key and it fails, you need to vet your applicants better.
And why not?
It would be better than this “nerf it just to my level.”
Other games you listed also aren’t RPGs.
Uhhh, we would still have the original fixed 20m Mythic raid. But you would have until the close of Hall of Fame to complete it. After that, it would be easy to patch it and make it a FLEX 10-30 with boss lockouts (they already have the code for that).
You’d get it both ways.
You are joking right? RAIDING was designed for GUILDS. It was, until we started to whittle it down, a 40m raid instance. And frankly it should have stayed that way! Instead of having 584308570348530475309457342 guilds with like ~10 or so active people, we’d have 4679265902 guilds with ~100 or so active people. BUT I am not asking for the 40m instances to come back, not at all. I am asking to make the 20m raids of the highest level more accessible to those other than the 1% of players.
There are a lot of other avenues to gear up as a solo player now, with the introduction of Delves. To be honest, I think the Delve system should reward Myth gear but it should be an INCREDIBLE feat to do… like Tier 20! And then again I also think Mythic+ should reward Myth gear, and it too should be an incredible feat to do, a M+20 and above.
The carrot on the stick is not just what people enjoy in this game, its also what keeps Blizzard happy because subscriptions don’t drop.
I whole-heartedly agree with you.
Even though, I personally still vote for patching the Mythic raid to a 10-30 FLEX after closing out Hall of Fame.
Idk I think it adheres pretty consistently to the concepts of an RPG. Harder thing gives better gear.
Ultimately I still think the game would be better if gear didn’t exist at all. Which is what your “Other games don’t make you weaker” analogy would adhere to.
Circling back to this for a moment. I distinctly remember certain cars being rewards for 1st place wins in harder races. Sure if you turn the difficulty down your car doesn’t get slower, but if you never do the harder difficulty you don’t have the cars that are awarded from them.
TL;DR: Looting in this game mimics the original sources without the full functionality that makes it work.
This, in my opinion, is the most fundamentally unsound argument in the whole range. Not that’s it’s incorrect in principle, but that it excludes the single most fundamental factor on which the premise is based.
The human mediator.
RPGs, specifically TTRPGs like D&D and its ilk work precisely because the Dungeon Master has the authority and capacity to bend every interaction in the favor of its players. A DM could save a D&D M+ at any time and almost every session could be made fun and rewarding.
This game does not have the flexibility, and not only that, but it punishes so regularly, or under-rewards (see Great Vault) with such regularity that it might as well be called rejection simulator.
In fact, I find any comparison between this game and RPGs to be almost entirely superficial. The word role in Warcraft is so fantastically hollow outside of perhaps RP servers that likening to it to the same word in traditional tabletop games seems intentionally misleading.
You could compare WOW to any ARPG.
Compare it to anything you want. I don’t know much about LoL, but I recall you purchase gear or skills by earning currency. Does that gear or skills differ by bracket? Is it stronger or weaker in any way? Honest question.
League is a PVP game.
The better you do, the stronger you get.
There are no lasting advantages that carry from one game to the next.
I’m playing Tears of the Kingdom right now and when I kill a silver lynel he gives me better gear to fuse than a white-mained lynel since he’s harder.
It’s a pretty straightforward concept.