Arcade mode baby. Memba, when you cc’d a mob or two. Didn’t have timers and an ego meter. Memba…
That’s why I gave you a few fights to watch.
Margin for error is lower, complexity is higher both in terms of boss design and class design, players have a wider array of tools and encounters are designed around the expectation players use them, the levels of coordination necessary as part of said execution is higher, and the ilvl the content is tuned around is higher relative to the maximum players are capable of acquiring (Meaning it’s less possible to outgear difficult content). And yes, failing a major mechanic even as a single person on most later mythic raid bosses is a wipe so the repercussions for failing execution are steeper.
The current tier is honestly somewhat of a step down compared to the previous even despite all that, especially in the first half. Though it picks back up on the last few bosses.
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This is something I would definitely agree on to a point. The available tools haven’t changed so much as more classes have access to more of them, and as such encounters can be designed to make sure everyone is using them.
For example, the explosion over the years of movement enhancing abilities and the amount of movement added to fights certainly go hand in hand.
Is that “challenging” though? When the state is binary, either you did the thing and you lived or you didn’t do the thing and now everyone is dead, is that challenge? To me, no. You asked how I define challenge, well binary outcomes isn’t it.
If you had a mechanic that was going to be applied and the question is how is your raid going to handle it, and you had any number of ways to do that, could be challenging, but that kind of gameplay has never really been part of WoW.
Things have always been binary, your contention is that the severity of that binary state is greater today than it used to be? Fine, I have no reason to doubt you there. I just don’t see the difficulty in it aside from the team coordination aspect.
You know, I unironically agree with this. Maybe not on every fight, but we could do with some tank and spank fights here and there. M+ and raiding doesn’t need to be white knuckle from start to finish. The occasional “cooldown” fight between finger-breakingly convoluted encounters would be good for the playerbase as a whole.
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I don’t think you can compare mythic raid fights that have 100+ pulls nowadays compared to older fight design but I still think some classic raids, which would include now up to cata, could be harder than some of the easier heroic raids we had since Legion, which would definitely make it harder than some of those first bosses of mythic Nerubar but those were simply not tuned/done properly at least from my opinion.
A big change which happened I think starting more in WoD, maybe some in mop was the heavy use of mechanic overlaps which classic doesn’t have as much. It’s also what caused the bosses to have way more abilities as they were not to be too threatening as standalone but to create deadly overlaps.
WoW has always derived some degree of its difficulty from collective execution. A higher demand on the average individual to execute a mechanic is an objective increase in difficulty. Be that through exposing more individuals to the mechanic and therefore offering more opportunities to fail, reducing the margin for error with the mechanic itself, or requiring the player executing the mechanic to also continue optimising their DPS rotation whilst doing the mechanic in order to meet the DPS check for the encounter.
I’d suggest you look at a mechanic such as pre nerf mythic Tindral seeds, or silken court mythic marks of rage and paranoia for some recent examples.
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How’s that different to the current content lmao
Sikran and Kyveza would fit that bill pretty comfortably.
Single target, single phase or 2 repeating, same basic mechanics whole fight, very scripted. Just tight margins on executing those basic mechanics and a notable (For their place in the raid) DPS check.
We often have 1-2 patchwerk style bosses like that per tier. Going back there’s been rashok, Terros, Skolex, Guardian, Sludgefist, Magmorax, Shad’har, Grong.
the fact that you said this like it makes it free and easy just completely destroys any argument you have made. tank is up there with the hardest specs to play correctly in retail.
depends on what the challenge is. it could be simple or it could be highly skilled. the results dont impact the challenge of the task just the repercussions of failing. which depending on how you take failure that can be a challenge in itself. now add that binary in with other challenges and yes you do have a fight that is a challenge.
this is literally describing the challenges of all raids from the start of the game. its literally the core of raiding getting 20+ people to dance to the same tune to overcome the challenges and the higher the difficulty the more severe the punishment for failing is.
Fair enough, I would agree that increasing the points of failure at the group level makes the content overall more difficult. I would still contend that at the individual level the “difficulty” is still more or less the same.
I just simply find the spastic nature of encounter design these days to be less enjoyable.
I did all the hardmodes in Ulduar in the recent WOTLK and Alg 25 man. The only thing we didn’t do is 0 light. I find the retail dungeons more annoying.
Probably fair… but mostly because Diablo 4 is garbage and D2 still holds up really well.
Naw- Classic is straightforward without developers trying to intentionally frustrate it’s payers while still retaining that grindy MMO feel. That’s what the differences boil down to.
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A lot of the time the margin for succeeding in executing the mechanic is smaller, and not to mention the DPS element. It’s very easy for the most part to do any mechanic in WoW if all you have to focus on is the mechanic, but if you’re also expected to maintain your DPS rotation through the movement required to execute it then that complicates things.
Ultimately what WoW asks an individual to do in a vacuum to kill a raid boss is not that hard, but it becomes much harder in context.
Yeah, I think Classic is just a superior product. Everything is better. The world is bigger, the classes feel interesting, the mobs aren’t just push over morons and the story builds up very well into the end game. Compare that to retail and none of that exists, besides the classes being interesting.
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I’m halfway on this one.
Vanilla was too slow and grindy for simple things. As a Fury warrior, I love my high ability per minute and I generally like retail better.
What I do think is that they tend to occasionally push too far into the eye-roll territory of cheesiness for some things where it fails to land. The dev chose it for some reason,and either ignored feedback or didn’t bother to play it themselves.
Fungal Folly’s mushroom channeling is an example of this.
in DragonFlight, every single mob, big, small, boss or trash for some reason had a “run away” mechanic. It was boring and got old FAST.
TWW, everything “runs away in fear” is another example.
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Retail’s difficulty is almost entirely focused on instanced content. Personally the instanced content in classic has generally held no interest to me when I’ve played, just as the world in retail doesn’t hold interest to me now.
I enjoy playing and experiencing the world in classic, but when I want to overcome challenges with like-minded people that feel appropriate to what I’m capable of I play retail mythic raids.
I have friends who raid cata classic right now who raid retail at the same level I do, they enjoy but they treat it more as a fun night with the boys than something to progress or overcome. They do one night a week and have been full clearing since week 2-3 each raid release, and mostly inebriated whilst doing so.
Retail seems to be higher highs and lower lows, like across the board in every aspect of the game.
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