games should never be designed around minmaxers or else you will force everyone to
minmax to get any enjoyment (or now, viability) at all
rather than it being the cream of the crop doing so
minmaxing becomes the barrier to entry
This is why raid participation has plummeted alongside the playerbase
if you take active steps to make something as easy as possible
you have NO RIGHT to complain about lack of difficulty
You are not “using your head” or “being smart” you are plugging your character into raidbots and buying off the auction house according to it, or going off icyveins, i do not know where this mentality of “I’m smart for using every single existing advantage possible and at my disposal even if it would make it less fun” came from. I’m guessing from these people never getting “just because you have an idea that everyone else did, and does too, doesn’t make you intelligent” swirlied into them as kids.
You could say the game was ALWAYS about minmaxing, but it really wasn’t, You would always have that guy who would show up to raid unenchanted and ungemmed and be middle of the pack on dps and nobody would care so long as stuff died, save for one sweat who got profanely “requested” to cease any utterances through a four letter acronym
“worst case” scenario, more people get AOTC and wind up trying out mythic and people who sell AOTC runs make less gold because it’s easier.
Heroic raid doesn’t require optimization. Mythic raid does, at the beginning of the season, but it gets progressively nerfed by raid buffs and player power.
So everyone gets what they want. If you want to do heroic raid without min/maxing, you are free to do so. If someone else wants to do HoF raiding because they enjoy content that’s poses a challenge that requires optimization, they are free to do so.
Past that, this is a game about numbers, and hence there are choices which are objectively superior in terms of player choice. That is not ever going away unless the game fundamentally changes, it is what it is.
I didn’t say required, I said it’s designed assuming minmaxing is the default. Which it is.
My mom used to be able to raid. So were many others. Many social gulds used to regularly raid.
Now the difficulty curve has gotten so high that I don’t see anyone in social guilds doing it anymore, save for the sweats. It used to be “bring your mom, bring your dad, bring your grandma, its raid night”
Now they need a bunch of addons and algari hps just to stay alive
Good luck trying to convince people around here though.
They’ve been soaking in the optimization meta for so long that they don’t quite realize what qualifies as the standard outside the game anymore.
If you’re looking up best-in-slot gear lists & talent builds, running damage meters, logging raid encounters and especially running simulations on your characters to find out what’s better for you?
Then you’re WAY past the point where it’s reasonable to everyone outside the game.
Who remembers the days when you used guides for one of two things?
Help you get past the point you’re “stuck” in a game.
Being a completionist, making sure you haven’t missed anything.
But when you’re expected to look up a guide before participating?
Something’s gone wrong with the game’s design.
“Expectation” is the key word. Some people will do it anyhow, but that’s just them.
But you shouldn’t be expecting everyone to do that, which is where we are.
From lfr to the first 1-2 mythic bosses it isn’t, but I would agree that the community acts like its required to minmax everything.
There’s people complaining about buying wow tokens for gold to get consumables and they’re doing like +10s or aotc. Nah, don’t spend irl money for that. Your group just needs to press buttons better, you likely already out gear it (in this example).
There is content you need to sweat over, but over the years that mindset carries down to easier content and just causes drama.
I agree completely, especially on this point. It used to be that you could just invite a bunch of people from trade chat and explain the fight in raid, then coach anyone who isn’t getting int until they get it. Bosses were simple enough to just explain, in raid. In a few short sentences.
Expecting people to watch videos and study a boss to actually fight it is beyond insane. The plot has been completely lost. There’s an issue with how fights are being telegraphed then. It’s a design issue. If people can’t read the boss by design until they look at a video, or they have to join a discord server with a bunch of diagrams and lines like that conspiracy theory meme, you missed the plot.
You are conflating possible, and designed around an expectation. The content is designed expecting everyone to have algari healing pots, a flask, and tempered pots. That isn’t just a way to kill the boss faster anymore. Thats what the devs expect.
For the fourth time, mythic raiding is but the other difficulties are not. Objectively.
I inferred mythic because that’s the only difficulty level your concerns around optimization apply to. You absolutely do not have to min/max or optimize to the last drop in order to clear heroic raid. You don’t need to choose every last right talent or itemize your stats in the most mathematically efficient way. And that also isn’t synonymous with “difficulty”.
I just don’t know how loose their expectations are, sorry. Like, yeah, all content is I guess designed with the expectation that we have access to consumables, etc. I don’t know if they think we should be using it every pull in every run and not just during prog though.
I think consumables might be a bad example, though, so that’s on me and my previous reply. The points on simulating gear upgrades, character builds and analysing data logs are stronger.
In my opinion, normal and heroic are still made with social guilds and minor optimisation in mind whereas mythic is designed with spreadsheets, maths, addons and rostering 100% expected.
As to why sweaty behaviour is more common in lower difficulties now and your typical Friday-Night-Drunk-Raid style guild is harder to find - I think that’s due to the community and less about design. I could be wrong.
It is still this way, Normal is braindead and Heroic ain’t that much of a bigger challenger maybe except the last 2 or 3 bosses depending on raid (sometimes none).
Hey, if you play at a high enough level then you have to learn the fights before the guides are made (at this level, you’re probably the guy writing the guide lol)
That’s a pretty extreme example lol.
Fps games do have the same problem as described here though. Every modern game does.
Fps games have community made content ranking every weapon, telling you to use this gun and what modifications to use in order to make it the strongest.
Single player rpgs like baldurs gate 3 will also have guides ranking the best classes or builds and telling you that this exact 4 character composition is the strongest and here is how you gear it to make it the best.
How would you propose, “not designing a game around min-maxing” because from my understanding min-maxing is the end result of all games with gear, stats and/or talent trees to choose from… if there is choice, min-maxing is the norm, because people are usually gonna do what is best.
Yeah, Min-maxing is just one extreme side of the spectrum.
The game is designed around the entire range of what’s possible. Some content will just expect the players to be closer to the maximum to beat it.
I guess to achieve what op wants, if mythic requires 95% efficiency, heroic 80% and normal 60% then they could start balancing content to instead be mythic 85%, heroic 70%, normal 50%.
100% efficiency didn’t change but now it’s possible to beat enrage timer if everyone is doing 85% of our true potential or whatever.
