Points Raised by Others
Enforced 20 man didn’t kill/make people quit Mythic raiding, if anything it made raiding more competitive. Encounters could be explicitly designed around a set raid size rather than designing for multiple.
I’d argue that by having a singularly defined challenging mode of content it actually became more challenging for the everyman and that is what pushed people away as you would put it.
Whilst yes, 9 is a smaller number than 19. Being able to surround yourself with likeminded individuals is the goal of the guild that should be established and pushed for. The reasons a good chunk of guilds I’ve been keeping my eye on (for recruitment purposes) have been disbanding are due to misaligned goals, they start to chase for some arbitrary world rank and add extra days or requirements and start to bleed people away due to burn out.
However, this burn out is also caused by system design. By forcing people to sit on a treadmill 24/7 for player power is straight up not respecting peoples time with the game.
I’d argue that Hall of Fame itself was a noble idea but it pretty much ends up as Alliance Hall of Fame being a bit of a meme as the end of Alliance Hall of Fame can often equate to World Rank 400-500, it is no longer a representation of player skill and achievement but just the fact you’re on a dead faction where your end boss was not Sylvanas this tier but convincing people to spend money to transfer to Alliance.
Would much rather an approach where its a fixed period of time or when 200 guilds total have completed (assuming factions will no longer be a thing next expansion).
New Points
The large steps between each difficulty mode
I would argue that the jumps from LFR to Normal, and Normal to Heroic is too big and are the biggest facilitator of players not filtering upwards. The gap between Heroic and Mythic is somewhat more in line as there’s an expectation of having more gear and understanding of mechanics as it is the highest point of difficulty.
LFR is pretty much an exploration of what the content looks like and an introduction to the mechanics. It also comes with some pretty neat mechanic diagrams on twitter sometimes:
Would be pretty cool if stuff like this could pop up in the LFR queue window to help players familiarise themselves with mechanics rather than twitter being the only avenue?
Normal is quite a significant step up from LFR (but can be outgeared)
Heroic is once again a significant step up from Normal, however this avenue is not outgeared as quickly as it’s on par with other loot sources available in game.
If we look at the difficulties individually and what they represent I can see an opportunity for improvement.
During LFR when you are facing a challenge that is greater than what your group can overcome, you are given a determination buff, this will stack to the point where you are able to overcome the obstacle.
In Normal (the introduction to structured raiding) there is no such way of overcoming this obstacle. You simply wait until you outgear it.
Personally, I think that Normal should be made more difficult than it currently is, but it should allow you to gain a couple of stacks of determination. This way you are able to overcome the obstacles which are more in line with what Heroic would present and allow the step from Normal to Heroic to be smaller.
I know it’s not really something that is a simple, it’s a philosophy shift, but I think it’s something quite interesting to think about.
The Economic cost of Raiding
This expansion has been the most extreme in this regard.
You have the increased herb costs for Potions/Flasks (but Procs were removed).
Scarcity of Materials (where materials required are only found in redundant content Zones)
Increased cost to crafting Tomes/Codexes
Combine this with the already high cost to produce for Cauldrons, Feasts, Vantus Runes the average raid night for a guild costs 3-4x more than it did a few expansions ago.
Loot Scarcity
People love to get gear. It’s a huge motivator, however rates of loot went down this expansion. With fewer items in the pool you want to have some element of control, Master Looter used to provide this for organized groups so now addons are used to replicate this.
The most sought after items however are caught on loot tables which are shared with a lot of superfluous loot, and this tier these are Weapons.
In Nathria Weapon Tokens were introduced which was a huge improvement from BfA, but then they were removed going into Sanctum? The weapons didn’t need to have 4 tints as they did for Nathria and could have easily been provided by Bonesmith in Korthia.
Imagine playing a rogue this tier, the only person who can trade daggers to you are other rogues and they kinda want it too. Instead, you watch the raid loot 3 rings and a chest piece for the 8th week in a row. It’s pretty demoralising.
Deterministic tokens dropping from bosses were good and should be used more.
There was also the removal of bonus rolls but the addition of the great vault. This gave people an element of control with the amount of choices they have for loot, but the deterministic element that bonus rolls provided is not there. Would be absolutely fantastic if you could toggle what your first slot was going to provide. A simple drop-down menu to say “I want loot from X boss/dungeon”?