On the Mythic Raiding convo - mythic lockouts must change

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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Every imagined evil of adding flex to mythic raiding is not nearly as bad as the status quo of mythic raiding. It would be a significant improvement. I don’t think there is any valid reason for not implementing it other than catering to the RWF, which I’m actually fine with, but then there is no reason not to make it flex after the RWF is over.

Changing lockouts would increase player freedom of movement, which is good, but the margins are so tight on some of the harder mythic bosses that you really want to reduce player turnover, so it would also hurt in some ways. I don’t think it solves anything unless paired with mythic flexing in size.

I found the idea of adding Raid+ interesting. I can see a few ways that could be fun, I could compromise on Mythic Raid being flex, and Raid+ being some sort of competitive league for teams of 20. It would add some interesting design decisions on how to balance. It’s definitely a fun idea to think of a way to turn it into some sort of esport, and liked the idea of setting up something conducive to that, since as a was pointed out, the devs currently have to balance mythic for the RWF and more casual players. We currently do that by nerfs, I wish we could also do it by making it flex after the RWF is over in order to remove the suckiness of having to bench people, but I think that having it flex and then an additional competitive scene built on top would be very cool.

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You cannot keep a balanced/flat level of difficulty with flex raiding. It’s meant to be challenging and competitive to one degree or another, varying group size will significantly change the difficulty of fights; already happens now with players restricting group sizes early in the season for heroic clears.

So many people complaining about balance of mythic fight difficulty and somehow at the same time completely ignoring how adding flex would add more additional balancing.

I don’t disagree mythic raiding needs a somewhat healthier environment, but flex raid size is not the solution.

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There isn’t a balanced/flat level of difficulty NOW.

Bring more Paladins / Bring more Mass Dispels / Bring more whatevers

Hell, BRING MORE DWARVES if you want to trivialize Fyrrak’s aflames.

So will class or racial stacking, and that’s already in the game, has been for years.

You: “That’s different.”

No, it’s not.

People pretend like Mythic raiding is some beautiful paragon of game design that must be preserved at all costs. When in reality, Mythic raiding’s game design is a clown show. A circus without a ringmaster.

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Except you don’t need to enforce any of those things to kill the bosses currently, stop pretending multiple classes can’t fill a specific role and that there’s zero overlap when it comes to strategy.

I know you’re convinced you’re right. Flex will be the savior of mythic raiding! Unfortunately, it wouldn’t.

Bring everyone right? Oh hey guys this fight is actually easier to handle this mechanic with 14 players, you, you and you will be sitting for the next X# of prog days. Or your RL pulls someone aside and tells them they’re not able to do the mechanic, and they’re gonna sit because they aren’t numerically required to complete the fight. Not to mention the numerous issues this would cause with developing mechanics and balancing them.

You’re hilariously short sighted in your misplaced confidence.

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Yeah there’s a whole THREE Fyrrak kills without a DK! Anyone can do it!

:rofl:

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As somebody who killed Mythic Sylvanas with no Priest (so no Mass Dispel when platform hopping)? Not recommended.

Sure would be nice if we could actually have people on the team without worrying about over-recruiting and having to bench people.

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So you’re admitting a DK isn’t required? Other classes have movement displacement abilities? Man who would’ve thought…

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It can be done but sucks. I know from experience doing CE Sylvanas and CE Raz.

Try running a CE guild, or even doing it for more than a couple years. You’re still in a Heroic raiding mindset, but you’ll come around.

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Irrelevant and I appreciate you moving the goal posts. If you actually want to discuss positives/negatives aspects of introducing flex raiding I’m all ears.

If you want to deflect and bring personal aspects, your trashcan opinion has a place somewhere beside your gray parses.

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Except you don’t need to enforce any of those things to kill the bosses currently, stop pretending multiple classes can’t fill a specific role and that there’s zero overlap when it comes to strategy.

I fail to see how this is different with flex. Flex does not somehow make the class requirements more stringent, it just lets you vary the size.

Bring everyone right? Oh hey guys this fight is actually easier to handle this mechanic with 14 players, you, you and you will be sitting for the next X# of prog days. Or your RL pulls someone aside and tells them they’re not able to do the mechanic, and they’re gonna sit because they aren’t numerically required to complete the fight. Not to mention the numerous issues this would cause with developing mechanics and balancing them.

I still fail to see how this is all that difficult from the status quo. “Sorry this fight is easier with an immune, or more ranged, you are out until we reclear (if we even do).” Or “You are struggling so much on this mechanic, we are going to bench you for the rest of the night.” We are currently having those exact same conversations with 20 person mythic. Flex doesn’t solve these issues, but it doesn’t create them either. And it does solve the many other issues identified earlier.

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If it doesn’t solve said issues why introduce it? If it’s just creating different points of roster volatility, what will it ultimately fix? Are there enough people at X skill level in smaller guilds or more heroic focused guilds where flex would actually lead to clearing the content? Would we not just end up in the current cycle of fatigue, burnout and roster loss as based on current designs requiring exponentially higher pull counts on later bosses.

Mythic serves as the hardest difficulty, if the fight is mechanically altered by less or more players, you’re not participating in the same fight. I don’t think anyone should be barred from content, but when raid size can effect the fight, at what point does mythic even serve a purpose if the difficulty curve is all over the place. There are people that care about the competitive aspect of Mythic, raid size will absolutely have an impact on that, so then how can you evaluate skill, kill position etc…

Every time someone brings up flex and mythic, imo, it always ends up being one of the least beneficial solutions that would result in more work on blizzards end, and to be frank I wouldn’t trust them with that balancing act based on their current track record.

Remove lockout restrictions, reduce HoF size, and open cross realm earlier. Guilds struggling with the “roster boss” can field players easier, bolster potential recruitment, and players not in for prog one week have the ability to clear/fill elsewhere and aren’t locked into the uncertainty of “oh we might need you” and not getting to raid at all. Potentially less burnout, better roster flexibility, and all without having to add additional tuning knobs on the back end or creating varying difficulty that detracts from the competitive aspect of the game mode.

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If it doesn’t solve said issues why introduce it? If it’s just creating different points of roster volatility, what will it ultimately fix? Are there enough people at X skill level in smaller guilds or more heroic focused guilds where flex would actually lead to clearing the content? Would we not just end up in the current cycle of fatigue, burnout and roster loss as based on current designs requiring exponentially higher pull counts on later bosses.

Your proposed solution of changing lockouts also doesn’t solve those issues, introduces much more roster volatility than flex would. Flex makes it easier for you to play with your group, no matter if someone can’t make it, or if an extra person can join. Changing the lockout just makes it easier for people to play with others. That’s fine from a pug perspective, but you really don’t want to be pugging on later mythic fights- and for that matter, good luck finding pugs that will stay through the number of wipes that late mythic fights take.

There are actually a fair number of players in small guilds that clear heroic and would love to prog mythic, but are prevented from doing so not cause of lack of skill, but because of the administrative difficulties. There are also a number of larger casual guilds that also make it through heroic, but then are in the place of having to tell people that they cannot play if they want to progress mythic because of the size limit. Flex would remove a giant barrier to entry and would increase the number of guilds running mythic, which IMO would be great for the raiding scene, and would make it easier for raiders to find a guild that matches their desires.

Guilds would be better able to adjust to burnout and roster loss with flex than with the current system, so it would be a massive improvement over the status quo. If someone burns out now, you have to replace them, or you can’t play. So over the course of the season, people burn out, guilds try and replace them, and if they fail, they stop raiding, and then their raiders go to other guilds to replace the people they have lost. Flex would allow guilds that still have a core roster to continue to raid mythic, and it would make it easier for them to adjust to people joining or leaving. Even on the side where I’ve benefited from someone joining because their guild stopped raiding, even having extra players join causes stress because now people are worried about their raid slot. Flex would be better across the board here.

Mythic serves as the hardest difficulty, if the fight is mechanically altered by less or more players, you’re not participating in the same fight. I don’t think anyone should be barred from content, but when raid size can effect the fight, at what point does mythic even serve a purpose if the difficulty curve is all over the place. There are people that care about the competitive aspect of Mythic, raid size will absolutely have an impact on that, so then how can you evaluate skill, kill position etc…

This is true for nerfs too. I’m not doing the same fight as the RWF for more than half the raid, and I’m perfectly okay with that. Mythic is still the hardest difficulty, and you can still challenge it with your guild. There is still a sense of achievement over beating a difficult fight. It doesn’t cheapen my achievement if someone else killed the same boss with a different number of players and it was 3% easier. But for those who care , I’m happy with keeping it locked to 20 while the race is ongoing for the competitive aspect. But after that point, I think its more important for more guilds and more people to be able to play than to try for some pure level of competition for who will get the 500th CE. We are all amateurs at that point. Some guilds raid 3 nights a week, others 2. Guilds have different raid lengths. Sometimes a key player might have something come up in real life. Certain players get PI, or were supported by an augvokers, others didn’t. There is no sanctity of competition. Let people play.

Every time someone brings up flex and mythic, imo, it always ends up being one of the least beneficial solutions that would result in more work on blizzards end, and to be frank I wouldn’t trust them with that balancing act based on their current track record.

You have ignored the multiple reasons that were given about how beneficial it would be for guilds.

And while I’m frustrated by some decisions by Blizzard as well, they’ve struggled most with key design decisions in terms of difficulty, rather than balance. I’ve been reasonably happy with many of the fights, especially the first two tiers, and believe they could definitely balance them in a way that made flex work. And you know, that’s actually their job, instead of the numerous raid/guild leadership teams that are putting in a bunch of unpaid and thankless work to manage around a 20 person limit and keep running raids for people. So I will ask them to do their jobs, rather than acting like they are incompetent and adding to the work for a bunch of unpaid volunteers.

Remove lockout restrictions, reduce HoF size, and open cross realm earlier. Guilds struggling with the “roster boss” can field players easier, bolster potential recruitment, and players not in for prog one week have the ability to clear/fill elsewhere and aren’t locked into the uncertainty of “oh we might need you” and not getting to raid at all. Potentially less burnout, better roster flexibility, and all without having to add additional tuning knobs on the back end or creating varying difficulty that detracts from the competitive aspect of the game mode.

None of these fix player retention issues. I tried to raid last night, and we were out a few people cause of real life issues. Even with cross-realm, cross-faction, the HOF being full, and many players being unlocked because their guilds have given up on mythic for the season, it’s still not easy to convince people to spend the next 3 hours wiping with you. Removing lockout restrictions makes it easier for players to raid/guild hop, but that actually comes at a cost for guilds, not as a benefit. How many people are going to jump in on pull 50 of Tindral, when you are not even consistently getting to the 2nd platform. How many people will spend 3 hours wiping with you when it’s clear that it’s not going to be a kill? Mythic progression requires coordination and consistency. Making it easier to pug doesn’t provide either, but flex would allow you to pull with 19 and continue working towards a kill.

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Difficult? no. Undesirable? Very much.

Do you really not see the issue with a design where the answer to killing the boss is to bench more people?

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This is just drivel. Heroic raiding guilds have had no lockouts for over a decade and they still manage to find people to prog. Having no lockouts in mythic would have meant you could have raided last night. The reason nobody wanted to join your raid is because they didn’t want to lose their lockout.

You need to be realistic. You are never, ever going to get flex mythic raid sizes. Blizzard have already said this hundreds of times. It is too difficult to balance. The closest you will ever get is a reduction in the mythic raid size from 20 to 15 or something.

But removing mythic raid lockouts is something that they could do tomorrow with a flick of the switch, and would fix many of the issues that you and other mythic raiders are facing.

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I’m sorry my typo made it too hard for you to understand. I still fail to see how this is all that different from the status quo. For example, with 20 person mythic, you have to bench people every single night if you want to maintain a stable roster. With flex, you don’t ever have to bench someone if you don’t want to. You have a choice, so it’s actually better than the status quo. For that matter raids have historically had more fights that were easier with more people, rather than less, so this could just as easily result in guilds bringing more people instead.

Heroic raiding guilds have also had flex for a decade, and they take the number of players they have, rather than benching people for some optimal number. There are completely different incentive structures currently, but I’m glad you agree that mythic raiding would benefit from being organized more like heroic.

I can’t even count the number of times Blizzard has said something and changed their mind. We have some great examples just this raid in fact! They’ve been sticking with 20 person mythic and just adding bandaids, meanwhile the mythic raiding scene has been slowly bleeding out, despite the best efforts of guild leaders and the RWF community. And that is because it doesn’t serve the average guild. It’s time for them to make a change.

I heard that about cross-realm. I heard that about cross-faction. I said they were bandaids then, and guess what? They didn’t solve the issue. A lockout change will make it marginally easier to pug, at the cost of slightly higher player turnover. I’m not even positive it would be a net positive from a guild leadership perspective, but it definitely does not solve the problems with mythic raiding.

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This is just pure conjecture, and flat out wrong if heroic is anything to go by, as players are benched/cut more often when attempting to cheese fight mechanics based on player number scaling.

I’m not going to quote your previous reply, but I will address certain things.

Reducing HoF size, earlier cross realm, and easing lockout restrictions, again, will absolutely benefit mythic raiding. More importantly, the idea behind proposing those over flex (both have their caveats) is that they’re easier from a design and deployment perspective for blizz. Making those changes also preserves a consistent difficulty for mythic raiding, a competitive environment in which there needs to be a bar.

To address roster volatility and guild hopping; it’s gonna happen in either scenario. If a guild can’t maintain players due to above average pull-count related burnout and getting hard stuck on wall bosses, no level of flex is going to change progress outside of benching or replacing players. An additional benefit here for lockout removal is friends/alts can fill slots with people out or players need to swap out for buffs/performance related issues.

Flex isn’t going to do anything for smaller heroic guilds with 10-14 consistent players. You’re essentially asking Blizz to design 2 levels of mythic encounters with that high of a variance in raid size; lacking buffs, lacking DRs, potentially lacking multiple classes that can fill for certain mechanics. This becomes a design and balance nightmare for blizzard, which is SIGNIFICANTLY more work than what I previously suggested.

No matter which way you slice it, Flex has MORE downsides, requires significantly more balance and design work, and chips away at any semblance of a consistent competitive difficulty.

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Flex isn’t going to do anything for smaller heroic guilds with 10-14 consistent players. You’re essentially asking Blizz to design 2 levels of mythic encounters with that high of a variance in raid size; lacking buffs, lacking DRs, potentially lacking multiple classes that can fill for certain mechanics. This becomes a design and balance nightmare for blizzard, which is SIGNIFICANTLY more work than what I previously suggested.

It will be harder for smaller raid sizes as currently is. Don’t need to design without those buffs in mind. People running without them will be experiencing a harder game.

No matter which way you slice it, Flex has MORE downsides, requires significantly more balance and design work, and chips away at any semblance of a consistent competitive difficulty.

Same “difficulty.” (Less people = easier movement, but higher dps checks.) Same amount of mechanics.

Downside: 20 man raiding doesn’t really exist, and guilds aim for 30 or 40 (whatever max is.)

And people still get benched because there are too many.

Imagine raiding 20 man when 30 is so much easier.

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THE BENCH itself its because you need a backup because i have to attend to the weeding of my dog, so you need a replacement for your main healer officer cool!

now you need to grab someone in your bench to replace me for 2 days then get him back to bench next week but keep going back and forth because if you have players in bench quoting all mythic guilds “ready to raid at a time notice” these ppl are losing their time and lockout of the week so you need to “dust off” your bench players every now and then to keep interest.

now is a problem if you “unbench” the bench players that means you gotta bench your core players, if you dont do that your bench players leave and if one of you cores in the near future misses a raid you have 19/20 players.

that is the problem with bench and not to mention any arbitraty BS preferentian treatment or anything we are assuming all guilds are equal and are guided by performance and principle which is not the case.

with flex raiding you can keep the bench raiding if they are good, because mythic raiders bench is not because they are bad its because you need to have good players on bench for possible absence.

so flex will:
-keep all your core happy and raiding
-will only require benching of the underperforming players
-you will not need to turbo recruit without overrecruiting
-managing raid buffs would be easier

  • the swaps in and out wont be as controversial and brutal, since the bench will also need thier “adjustment pulls”

and the benefit list will go on and on myth raid 20 man lock its just gatekeeping and exhausting for midcore raiding guilds it also make them eat each other people including me lose hope and loyalty at some point and just leave for better opportunity’s to prog because at the end of the day you can bash your head to the wall so many times before you lose your mind.

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The issue with bench can just as easily be solved by removing lockouts. Having to balance mythic raiding for 20 possible raid sizes is a much bigger task.

You don’t need a bench if you can pug replacements. Removing the lockout allows you to do that. The lockout is the only thing stopping people from pugging right now.

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You can already find replacements if you have advance notice. (Recruitment Discord) for example.

Finding replacements with 500 pull exp not so much.