Mythic Raids Need to be a little easier

The issue isn’t that there exists unapproachable content, it’s where the line is drawn. Mythic/CE progression is tuned for the top 5-10% of people can complete it in a tier. That seems reasonable, except that there exists this middle ground of heroic raiders who “have the ability” to be Mythic raiders, but lack the schedule or the connections or whatever, but also who used to have a sizable power advantage over non-raiders.

That gap has closed now. My druid (literally only ever raider like 3 times) has the same average item level as heroic raiders, just about because I do tons of M+. Heroic raiders need to feel special for being heroic raiders, but heroic just feels like normal now because of benthic, scaling world quests, prevalent titan forging, and dungeons that award consolation for completing instead of success in keys.

OP obviously not in that group, since he can do the content, but there’s always a line somewhere, and also multiphase story bosses are kinda crazy.

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It’s a consequence of instanced design.

Instances breed exclusivity and people then bring who they need not who they like. That pushes an exceedingly narrower and more efficient group that then pressures the development team to make harder and harder raids. The cycle then repeats and we wind up where we are today.

Get rid of instances outside of M+ racing. Make raids 40 or even 72 man again. Make raids difficult enough so that 1 half the raid needs to be on their toes to beat it. Open world rules on raid bosses. You tag it you bag it. Bosses will be on timers and weekly lockouts will be gone. Make that kill a competition. Make it so having the most people makes the most successful route.

The end result will be a game focused on getting more people, exploring and building community the way it always was meant to be in MMORPGs. An extended family, people you love spending the night with while you all do something in an environment you can’t get anywhere else.

Keep e-sports where they belong. Outside of the MMORPG.

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Holy priest is actually really good on Ashvane because C&S Spell Ward immunes a briny bubble every round.

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Convenient then, that literally the entire game outside of mythic raiding does so. Let people who want a challenge have one. The mere existence of stuff lower-end players can’t manage doesn’t hurt them, especially when all it is is a harder version and lazy recolor of the thing they can.

Hell, even Nintendo still has challenge modes. Don’t tell me they’re not accessible and playing to their audience.

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Raids were never 72 man… what are you smoking?

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Not in WoW, but I’m other games.

This suggestion might have some merit.

Ever done a bg with 40v40. I would rather not have that frame rate in my raids thanks.

With 4 difficulties so everyone can enjoy raiding at their own level.

Thought I should finish that sentence for you.

And the other half can afk it

Finished that sentence for you too.
Also we already have that. its called LFR.

^ this is spot on. it does not hurt players to have more difficulties to choose from. If you dont like mythic… great dont do it. I personally dont like doing LFR so I dont do it. Im not going to ask for it to be removed though because I know there are people that like it.

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Is merit the new word for completely nonsensical ideas? There is zero merit to the idea:

Raiding/content should never just be “throw as many bodies as you can find at the target and player ability/skill be damned” because that is just absolutely stupid.

If Pikkarg wants to play EQ they should go play EQ.

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I meant, the general concept of finding in game ways for being guilds or grouped an incentivized form of play.

Currently, being part of a guild or a group actually slows down progression for all but the very top end of raiders, and raiders shouldn’t be the only ones who get to experience that feel of community.

I understand there’s a class of people who want to play the game as a solo experience, but I can’t imagine there are more them than the middle-of-road players who want to play the game but have too tight a schedule to mythic raid, and also I don’t believe the goals have to be mutually exclusive.

You do know that raids like that (such as MC and Onyxia) were killed in the first week of WoW classic. The guild that killed Onyxia only had 30ish people. What you are describing is basically LFR on majority of bosses. It sounds like you just want to be in that 2nd half that can afk and get free loot.

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G’huun was a bad fight. Its that simple. Its not comparable to KJ. The biggest difficulty with ghuun was getting those 2-4 locks and 6 solo runners together. No fight should be dependent on a comp that specific it limits as much as half the raid.

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EQ had 72 man raids.

More to do with personalized spell effects but obviously there is room for improvement in the rendering engine.

The problem then is that community spinters and exclusivity becomes a problem. Or did you skip the entire post besides what you quoted?

I’m not asking for LFR. LFR is instanced raiding. That’s the same problem all other forms of raiding have in this game.

I want open world raids.

It’s not stupid actually. It’s the community-focused approach to MMORPG design.

If you aren’t locked to 19 others you won’t be as picky. If the encounter wants for more people you will get as many as you can. That generates a more welcoming community and overall a better more socially engaging experience.

You could just do instanced dungeons and raids but if it were up to me all your power gain would come from the open world. NOT from instances. Instances being the big problem here.

Also I love how none of you addressed the exclusivity problem created by instanced content. You all cherry picked your quotes and avoided that one. Typical general forum.

I’ll address that issue for you. People who pay for their game time shouldn’t be looked at negatively for wanting to be able to choose who they play with.

What you see as an “exclusivity problem” is actually a way that helps people find other people of similar ability and interest. Instead of needing to carry, using your ratio of half the raid being competent, 30+ other people who are basically afk, they can choose to play with people who play the game the way they do, and manage much more difficult challenges with much less frustration.

The only people who “suffer” from this “exclusivity problem” are the people that want better or more prestigious rewards than they are willing to put in the effort for. That sounds perfectly fine to me.

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Nobody is saying you can’t play with the people you want to play with. You missed that point entirely. The point was to play with the people you enjoy playing with.

If you like loading up your 40 or 72 man raid with only elite players nobody is telling you that you can’t do it. But if you like to have a spot for your mom, nephew, neighbor or someone who isn’t playing the game as much as you do that won’t be a problem either.

Similar interest and ability is an odd way of saying hard requirement. I’d say we have a similar interest and ability to login to WoW and play the game for several hours a day. Beyond that it’s all gravy. If the game is fun anyway.

What you’re defending is a system by which an exceedingly smaller number of participants are challenged even harder creating an exceedingly smaller number of participants each time. Shaping the game experience around a smaller and smaller number of players isn’t smart. Nor is it smart locking them to a mode of play that they have to play with people they like don’t even want to play with.

Mind, you’d still be able to do that but gear wouldn’t be the focus of it. If you want to go into exceedingly more challenging content for the sake of saying you did it then I’m fine with that. But this multi-tiered instance design of raiding would be the first thing I’d get rid of.

You don’t read me too well. I never once said gear. I said community. That you are ignoring the obvious here, that people have to be picky when locked to instance raid design is incredibly obvious.

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Well, that would be true for bosses that are instanced…

In the open world you’re stuck with whichever 40 or 72 show up. Have you ever seen world bosses? This already exists, and it’s mostly groups of randos with a few people doing most of the work and everyone else being present poking the pinata a little bit.

There are several difficulties that already accommodate this. There is no need to water down all of the game’s content for these people. There is nothing wrong with having a sliver of content that requires a high level of execution and coordination.

Okay, so imagine player 1 who logs in one week a month for pet battle week, has no gems or enchants, has no idea how to play their class effectively, and spends no time working to improve their performance.

Player 2 logs in daily to complete every world quest that provides even a tiny bonus. They complete islands for neck advancement. They push M+ as hard as possible for maximum gear improvement opportunities. They religiously sim gear and ensure that it is gemmed and enchanted with the highest quality enhancements. They read about the theorycrafting for their class and study boss fights so they are ready to contribute to their raid group at the highest level.

Do you believe these two players have the same interests and abilities? Do you think they would both be happy or satisfied in the same raid group?

Do I need to give more examples or will you accept that “interest and ability to login to WoW” is a gross oversimplification and a pretty ridiculous statement with regards to a topic involving mythic raiding?

Community isn’t strangers doing the same thing at the same time. Community is people interacting in a meaningful way with a genuine interest in the welfare of the other people around them.

A small town has more community than a large city. Guilds of people who share interests and who spend their game time together have community, whether or not they raid. RP guilds, raid guilds, pvp guilds, etc. are all examples of people who have built community around shared interests.

A group of random people smacking a world boss loot pinata with whoever happens to be around aren’t having a better community experience just because it’s not “exclusive”. It is most certainly worse for the community to have 72 individuals using 71 other individuals to spend a few minutes attacking something together for the reward and then never speaking again than for groups of people to gravitate towards each other and create the nuclei of things like guilds.

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I wouldn’t call open world raid bosses even that. They are much easier than most anything designed in EQ for raiding. Even classic raid bosses are step up from world bosses.

I can solo 5 box some world bosses. That’s a fact. That’s not a raid.

The open world raids I’m talking about would actually take work and coordination. But it would be done closer to what EQ 1999 did. If you have a 72 man raid the bulk of that raid party added to your DPS. You only needed 2 groups of players at most to handle all the complicated mechanics of tanking / healing / cc.

If people show up to AFK just like in EQ 1999 that would be a problem. There is a huge difference between modern wow raiding and afk. The reason people afk in LFR is it’s all anonymous. You can’t control for who shows up. So people abuse the system for that reason.

It wouldn’t be anything like that with LFR gone and 40 man raids being the norm again.

The problem with the multi-tiered instanced raid design is still an exclusivity issue. If Joe Casual spends his time in game playing in an entirely separate instance from you then you aren’t playing with him. His personality, his efforts in game and his experience are ultimately limited by how much exposure he has to you. Worse if it’s someone you want to bring to the game it doesn’t help to have them in some other instance removed from what you’re doing.

And yeah raiding might be a 2 day a week thing for some people. For most it’s nothing like that. They play WoW just to raid. So it’s not like they are even dividing their time between raiding and friendships. At the end of the day the MMORPG experience is about friendships.

Of course then you get to the saturation of scripted, finely groomed gameplay of modern WoW raiding. The entire reason burnout exists is because this style of instanced raiding grooms you down to playing exactly the same way every time to achieve success. Same builds, same people, same strategies, etc. That might be fun for a few weeks but people naturally get sick of it.

With open world raids that doesn’t happen. It’s always different because of the open world dynamics with other players. You might secure the kill or you might not. Someone might beat you to it. So there is far less planning and far more securing resources (other people) on the spot where possible. That makes the entire thing more organic and more dynamic putting less pressure on the developers.

I’d argue this chasm between P1 and P2 was created by the wow development team. Very few people enjoy the instanced exclusivity of modern WoW raiding. I’m one of them. I could do it but I don’t enjoy it. I’d rather spend time in the world or working on my multibox crew. That to me is more fun than grinding the same damn thing for weeks on end honing a strategy down for a win. Instancing raiding isn’t dynamic. The sole intent of its existence is to groom you down to doing the same thing for weeks on end.

So P1 enjoys logging in and doing pet battles. I don’t do pet battles so I have no idea how interesting they are. I 5 box dungeons. That’s where my interest is.

I can tell you that I 5 box dungeons because it’s far and away more dynamic than being in a raid with 19 other people hardcore grooming ourselves down to victory. It’s that academic to me. I suspect a large share of players who don’t raid feel exactly the same way.

I don’t disagree about the first paragraph here. It’s my big point. There is no community in WoW. Some large part of the community does LFR which is so anti-MMORPG it’s a wonder it got off the development table. It’s wholly anonymous, it’s instanced (which is the biggest strike against it) and it’s largely dynamic for the wrong reasons (people killing LFR run for the fun of it because it’s anonymous).

Then you have the exceedingly smaller band of raiders locked to exceedingly more difficult encounters. They play with each other because they have to. At least if they want to keep going.

Then you have people like me entirely checked out of all raiding. Because I dislike the format. There’s lots of us, too.

All this points to a big problem with instanced content. We’re all doing something else when we’d rather be doing something that no longer exists in the game. And no, world bosses that exist today are a poor excuse for community content. There is scant power gain from doing them, they are trivial off the bat and they don’t require high numbers of players. So no they don’t grow community. They are speedbumps on the way to instanced gaming.

I’ll give you an idea of what a typical 72 man Plane of Fear raid looked like for us in EQ.

On Friday night the server community would get together. We would start talking to each other about organizing for the raid. We’d meet in The Ferrott which was the adjacent zone and we’d start forming the main break in parties. It would take two well equipped and knowledgeable parties to break the Plane of Fear gate.

Now because The Ferrott was a challenged zone with Oggok (city of Ogres) and Innothule Swamp (home of the Trolls) nearby, PvP was common. You’d actually have to have several more groups to deal with the invaders if you were raiding as the human alliances. Sometimes that PvP alone would kill raids.

The Plane of Fear raid break in groups would enter while the rest of the raid distracted the invaders. Once they got the Plane of Fear gate under control (the zone aggro is enormous and patrols are everywhere) everyone else would enter. At that point a subset of the party handled all mechanics while everyone else contributed DPS and heals.

These raids would sometimes go from Friday night into Sunday morning. No joke. They were 72 man raids and we had a blast doing them in college. Much homework was missed.

The dynamics that this event had were numerous. All because it was based in a community-driven, dynamic format with P2P and PvP happening in it. You took who you had because that’s what was available. So a LOT of unscripted things would happen. People you might not like would show up, people you really like but hardly ever got the chance to play with would, too because 72 was a big number of participants. You couldn’t afford to be picky.

That on top of the PvP along with the 2 party break in requirement set the stage for a largely unscripted event. A thing for all of us to do on Friday night. To be out in the world working towards power gains in a largely dynamic and unscripted way. It remained fun for years.

I left EQ around 2006 when in a desperation play it switched to instanced content. Why play the inferior WoW? I stopped and then a year later started WoW. 2 weeks before the dark portal opened up. Everything that made EQ what it was, was shattered.

That’s okay. I’m playing with people I want to play with, and he’s presumably playing with people he wants to play with. I don’t need to play with every single subscriber to feel like the game is successful.

For some people. I don’t think there is any one definition of what an MMORPG experience is. It’s whatever it is to each individual. Someone who plays solo and never interacts with anyone else isn’t wrong. They’re certainly not getting everything out of the game, but who am I to tell them they’re wrong if they’re having fun? If there are people who log on to raid with people who aren’t friends because that’s what they want to do, it’s not wrong just because you say it is.

There is one reason people burn out? Are you sure? Do you have anything other than your speculation to support that hypothesis? And what about the people that don’t burn out? Everyone in the raid community is exposed to this exact same scenario and many don’t burn out? How do you explain that?

All people? And even if it’s most (it’s not), what’s wrong with people getting sick of it and playing the game in a way that is more fun for them? Not everyone needs to raid mythic. Not everyone needs to raid. There are plenty of things in the game for people that don’t think raiding is fun.

You find it more dynamic. Other people would hate this system. Logging on hoping there are enough people, potentially being denied success because another group is ready first, potentially not getting any reward because none of the groups that you join can kill the boss would be considered a “waste of their time”. You’re not wrong about what you prefer, but they’re not wrong about what they prefer.

Really? How many enjoy it? How many are longing for no instances? Did you gather your information by survey or are you making it up on the spot? Do you understand that instances exist for the purpose of inclusivity? No longer do you sit and stare at a boss corpse because someone beat you to it. Get your group together, enter the instance, and boom! The whole raid is there for your group at your group’s convenience. The other faction can’t kill you while you’re trying to kill the boss, other groups can’t kill it moments before your group is ready, denying you the opportunity until the next respawn. It is ready for everyone on demand when it is instanced. Inclusive raid experiences for everyone.

How is 5 boxing scripted, instanced dungeons more dynamic than playing a scripted, instanced raid with other players? You’ve actually removed the dynamic variable of other peoples’ performance.

It only points to that because you started with that conclusion and then connected all the dots to lead you to your predetermined conclusion. I’m not sure you recognize how your anti-instance agenda is biasing your perspective.

So let me understand. EQ had a superior game system that people universally loved, but somehow was eclipsed by an inferior system that people universally hate, and tried to recover their players by switching to an inferior system that was somehow more popular?

If more people preferred the EQ system you’re glorifying it probably wouldn’t have “shattered”. I think you need to accept that what you want in the game is not representative of a vast majority of players. Instead of trying to change WoW into what you want, you should probably find a game that gives you the experience you’re looking for.

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My biggest issue with mythic difficulty right now is some of the 300+ pull, multiple phase, extend-every-week-for-a-month-or-two behemoths that Blizzard has been pushing for arguably three expansions now (often the endboss) though someone else already detailed my issues with this several posts above. Fights like that are more exhausting than satisfying to beat and feel more like a relief than a victorious celebration once defeated, in my opinion.

As far as difficulty as a whole I think a case could be made from the perspective of the health of the raiding scene. Kill rates have been getting lower compared to other expansions and last tier 40 Alliance guilds barely completed M-CoS. Recruiting skilled players capable of meeting current raid skill demands has been getting tougher (doubly for the Alliance) and you can’t deny that Classic WoW hasn’t helped in this regard with how much appeal it has had with fellow WoW enthusiasts (of any version of the game).
The question then becomes, how much of the fidelity of mythic raiding is Blizzard willing to sacrifice in order to inject more life to the raiding scene? I raid mythic for the challenge so I wouldn’t want it turned into a glorified heroic but it’s certainly a discussion Blizzard has to have if they want to keep raiding as a major pillar of the game (as opposed to getting slowly supplanted by M+).

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Last time I saw, WoW was not EQ.

So why you acting like it was?

I disagree. Joe Casual is only limited by his own desire to remain casual. If he’s happy where he is, that’s fine. If he wants to stop being casual, he’s free to use his LFR experience to PUG normal raids and/or to apply for a normal raiding guild. Once in, he can gain experience and then stay there, or use that experience to apply for a heroic raiding guild. And so forth. He’s not limited in any way by not being immediately thrown in with top tier players.

We have four tiers of raid difficulty. That’s plenty. There’s something there for everyone. This is more of a welfare gear and ilvl bloat issue, where persons who are satisfied doing casual content are given gear way above what they need, want to do new content thay will give looy upgrades, and see no point in starting out with normal raids or low keys (because there are no loot upgrades for them) – and then dive right into the deep end of challenging content.

We need a more sensible loot system, and not to be handing out normal/heroic ilvl gear for casual content. Keep the casual players limited to about 350 gear, so they actually have a reason to do LFR or normal if they want to get in to raiding. Then they’d be learning new content at the easiest difficulty, while still being able to look forward to useable upgrades.

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