Imagine a policy, where for every change that was added to wow, you had to get 20 people on your team in a room, and have them agree with it. But if you have more than 20 in your team, you have to tell some of them to go home, and they are not allowed to participate. But if you have less than 20, you have to go grab random people off the street and have them join your meeting. Sounds dumb right?
If you have more than 20, you are excluding your team members. No matter how you try and handle it, this leads to bad interpersonal dynamics. You are forcing the exclusion, where leaders have no option to bring more than 20. Random feels bad, rotation feels bad, having a constant stress of losing your spot feels bad, feeling like an outsider feels bad. I would consider reading some books about psychology, because you are creating a lot of toxicity with your design. Do you think it is good to kick your team members out of a meeting just because you hit some specific quota? Maybe there are not chairs, would you pull in a chair from outside, or stand with them? I hope you would. Now why do you not give guild leaders the option to do the same?
Because the alternative is not having enough. Now you have 18 of your team sitting in the meeting (but frustratingly enough, prevented from doing anything productive), while you try and find randos in the hallways or on the streets, most of who have no interested in joining you. And those who do, you don’t know if they will be a culture match, if they will have any skill or experience, and they certainly don’t know how your team does stuff. But you need them for your meeting anyways, because otherwise the meeting room doesn’t let you talk. (Yes, I realize this is a little forced a metaphor, but I don’t know how else to make you understand that these are real people, and these are very predictable outcomes of the systems you have designed.)
So then your option is making sure that your team has more than 20, so that you never have to deal with being unable to push out a critical update because you don’t have enough. But then you are back to having to kick people out of your meeting rooms.
Does that sound like a healthy work environment?
That is the system you have forced on all guilds that want to raid mythic. It dehumanizes people, and screws up social dynamics. It is abusive by design. And it is part of why the mythic raiding scene has been bleeding players and guilds. As much as I enjoy the fights and the game, I can’t take this much more.
Please, I’m begging you: change mythic to allow some flex, even just 17-23, where that way you can recruit your team up to have enough flex to account for any vacations or absences, while not having to kick them out of the room. Let us challenge ourselves without being forced into toxic behaviours.
Imagine a policy, where for every change that was added to wow, you had to get 5 people on your team in a room, and have them agree with it. But if you have more than 5 in your team, you have to tell some of them to go home, and they are not allowed to participate. But if you have less than 5, you have to go grab random people off the street and have them join your meeting. Sounds dumb right?
I would use the words “tortured analogy” but at least you recognize there are issues here.
Let’s try something a little more appropriate. Terrible game design. Imagine a sport where you have to have 9, and only 9 players on the field at a time. Isn’t that toxic? You put a roster together of 26 players, but only 9 of them can be in the game at once. But maybe baseball sucks.
Imagine a game where you can only put 11 players on the field at once. You have 53 on your roster, and even your 22 starters have to sit at least half the time, not to mention the other 31. This just promotes bad feeling and bad interpersonal dynamics. Wow, football is toxic too.
Imagine a game where you can only put 5 players on the court at one time…
Do we need to go on?
Mythic raiding is a competitive team mode, it’s not for individuals. If you can’t handle sitting because it helps the team win then mythic raiding isn’t for you. Heroic raids have flex capability for the more casual raid structure.
Blizzard said it’s not possible to balance mythic for every possible flex size. What you should be asking for instead is the removal of mythic raid IDs, so then you won’t ever have to worry about maintaining a bench. You could instead just pug people if you fell short of 20 players.
Wouldn’t be too difficult to find experienced people in the queue if raid IDs didn’t exist. For one thing it would mean that people who missed their main guild’s raid that week could just sign up to do it with someone else.
It’s very hard to pug anyone for the later bosses because joining an in-progress run means sacrificing your chance to kill the easy bosses for your vault that week, with no guarantee of success. Removing raid IDs gets rid of this problem.
You know something cool? 5 is a much smaller number than 20, and 30 minutes is a much shorter time than ~3 hours multiple times a week. So they have very different dynamics. 5 people sounds a lot less dumb than 20, which is why you tried to make the conversation about that instead. Doesn’t change anything I said.
None that are as big of a problem as “people not raiding”.
I know you’ll probably say something about boosting or whatever, but the truth is nobody cares. People can boost all they want, surely the priority should be to make mythic raiding less reliant on bench players and the attendance boss.
Yes, known bastion of healthy culture, football. Really?
The very top players are secure in their contracts, but even they know they will be cut loose if they get injured. Everyone else is stuck in the grind and a competition for slots, trying to get into training camps, trying to get into the practice squad, trying to get into the full time roster, and constantly facing the pressure of cuts if they don’t measure up. It is not a healthy culture, but they are at least paid for their troubles.
And then they all burn out and stop playing eventually, either cause their body can’t keep up, or because they are on the edge of making the teams and finally they decide they are done. You don’t have football teams with the same players as 10 years ago. It isn’t designed for that. Professional Sports are designed around the teams, not the players. If you view your raid as a place where you want to constantly be replacing your raiders with people who parse better, so no one feels secure in their spots, that is your prerogative. But I actually like my people and would like to treat them as people, not as interchangable cogs.
I’ve led a mythic raid team literally since it has been a thing. I’ve tried every different strategy for benching people and managing rotations, I’ve benched myself, I’ve been the 21st person raid leading from stream, I’ve lost friends benching them. I’ve also spent ages trying to pug people, building connections and asking people to join, or even killing bosses with 19. It is a broken structure.
And Heroic is easy. There is no challenge there for my team even at this point. Mythic is the only reason we keep our subs active, and there is going to be a point, just like with every other mythic raiding guild, where the officers can’t take it anymore. And then wow and the mythic raiding community will bleed even more players.
i honestly dont think there is a world were they make a flexible mythic raid and still keep it the same difficulty or worse your going to have certain bosses be easier at a certain number of raiders so now the bench will need to be even more flexible to make up for that. as of right now my guild raids 4 hours a week and we often pug people for our heroic runs to make connections and keep our mythic team filled. we arnt an hof guild or anything but its worked out fine for us so far.
This suggestion often comes up, but it is just as much a bandaid as cross-realm mythic, or cross-faction mythic. It doesn’t fix any of the underlying issues, just like neither of those did. The only thing about my post that removal of mythic raid IDs would change is making it more likely that the people off the street would join the meeting. It does not change a single dynamic from a guild/community standpoint.
But I did ask for a very limited slice of raid size, which would fix all those guild/community issues. Not every possible size, but a small variation. Which is possible to balance to the extent that Blizzard balance anything.
I am glad that you are having success with recruiting in heroic. I’ve done that before, and it can be a lot of fun. But then once you get into mythic, you have probably experienced the winnowing effect of people slowly stopping showing up, or finding other groups, if they were not in the core. And then this cycle repeats every season.
The thing you are worried about is literally the current situation, where people are forced to be dropped or brought to get the “optimal” and only size of 20. At least with some flex raid leaders will have the choice. Like, most guild leaders are not going to go with dropping to the optimal number straight away even if there is one, you don’t see that happen in guilds with heroic, and it wouldn’t make sense because of how mythic fights work. You want as many people in your core team to have experience with the fights and strategies, so that if people are missing and you need to pull them in, they know what is going on. If you did drop people, it would be at the end of progression on that boss, when you are hurting for the kill and if someone is particularly struggling (or you absolutely need space). And then you will bring as many people as possible on the reclear, trying to get everyone involved but also because of gear. So this change would have a net increase of people off the bench, and in the raid playing.
Why should that be the priority? Shouldn’t the priority be on making the highest quality top level challenge for the people who want to engage with it?
Why do you think I want to constantly replace people or make someone insecure in their spot? I just think Mythic needs to be team oriented, and if people are going to be upset about sitting and being part of a rotation then they aren’t team oriented. I have basically zero patience for “me first” players who don’t value the team.
Because you seem to think that’s what raiding should do because that’s what sports do.
Your analogy fails because you’re describing professional sport. Most mythic raiders are not professionals and do not get paid. They are more akin to a local league sports team.
And guess what, local league sports teams do not keep large benches of people who don’t get to play. Because it’s not fun. And those people are playing for fun, not money.
You realize that 9 players, 11 players, and 5 players is pretty standard for organized leagues of baseball, football, and basketball right? Even the amateur ones.
But they do keep benches, and rotate people in, because it’s even less fun when no one gets to play because they don’t have enough. It just requires a team first mentality instead of a me first mentality.
Replacing people is inherent to the system that you are defending, and it has the very predictable effect of making people insecure in their position. Mythic is team oriented, and I am not talking about “me first” players. I’m saying that it sucks to log on and not be able to play with your team. And it sucks to have to tell your team that they can’t play with everyone else. Even if everyone involved is understanding, it wears on people. (Not to mention the flip side, of having to find people from outside at the last minute when stuff comes up, when pugs much more frequently are me first players, just to play with the people you want to play with.)
Given that you know the difference between an analogy and a metaphor, you should also know the definition of the word “required”. Currently, you are required to bring a specific number: 20. If raid size has some flex, you are no longer required to bring a certain number of people. The community may decide a certain raid size is best for different bosses, but no one is requiring you to use that size, there are plenty of reasons not to.
Guilds do not think just about a single boss kill. That is pug thinking. Guilds need to think on the level of weeks, seasons, and even years. If you drop people when you don’t need to, you are hurting yourself in the long run. You are no longer providing an experience that people want. And having to hit a certain target is the exact same experience as currently exists. All I’m proposing is that we have a healthier alternative, for people who want it. You can choose between “optimal” and healthy. Not everyone plays to be in the HOF, for many groups the competition is mostly against themselves, to see how far they can push, and then maybe for bragging rights on their server. The current system is failing these guilds.
It’s only inherent in that people for various reasons move on or take breaks and leave holes in the roster. There is no inherent need to replace people who show up reliably and perform adequately.
If there is a rotation, then nobody isn’t playing, they just might not be playing at this very moment. But as you mention later, the season is months long. Getting butthurt because you rotate out of a boss fight so someone else can get in is short sighted.
It is naive to believe that any significant number of progression guilds will voluntarily use non-optimal flex numbers if there are advantages to be had by taking more or fewer.
No, they think about getting the next kill. Which means getting this one. There’s no reason to take an extra hour progging a boss that so Johnny doesn’t get annoyed that he was to wait until next week to kill it when that time could be spent on progging the next boss.
These guilds are failing the current system. It’s the highest level of competitive content, and it’s designed to be standard for every raid group. If you’re not willing to play by the rules then you’re not willing to play. Flex is a worse experience for the people the content is designed for. I’m all for making improvement changes to anything, but never at the expense of the primary audience.
The issue that came up again and again and again is that 10 man mythic was considerably more difficult to tune than 25 man in most cases.
Honestly a small wedge size would not be a big deal but the best solution at the moment is to simply rotate your bench. Nobody wants to be bench forever.
If it was a single night ragequit I would agree with you. But this is something that wears on people over the season, and between seasons, especially while you are recruiting. You eventually burn out the players that are on the lower end of your raid team, no matter how good their attitude, it isn’t good on the psyche.
It doesn’t appear as though you are an office or guild leader, so let us consider the way guild leadership would approach a few scenarios, with the only differences in being allowed raid size.
It is day 1 of your raid week so you are starting fresh, you have 22 people online:
Mythic 20 - You invite 20 people to raid, and then rotate who sits based off of different factors, often who needs loot off of farm bosses. 2 people are sitting for every boss.
Mythic Flex - You invite 22 people, and everyone gets to participate.
You get to a progression boss, and it is late progression, you already have quite a few pulls from last week:
Mythic 20 - You sit two people to start, most likely including the person who was sitting at the end of last week. It sucks but they understand. You could also sit the worst players on that fight, which sucks even more, but also they understand. (Still sucks though, from a game that is supposed to be fun!)
Mythic Flex - All 22 people stay in for a pull or two as you evaluate how things look tonight.
Now a decision point depending on how the progression is going. Best case, you already killed it with everyone rested and having upgrades, which means with everyone was able to participate in the kill. But let us say that instead, the boss is getting low, but still not dead. Now depending on the issue, your responses will be very different.
First, let us assume that there is a specific player messing up. This is the easiest situation.
Mythic 20 - You might decide to sit the person who keeps dying early. Now you need to bring in one of the people from the bench, make sure they are up to date on the strategy and their duties. You might choose to rotate the other person sitting as well (or not). It may cost you a wipe or two for them to warm up and get used to it. You still have 2 sitting.
Mythic Flex- You can sit just the person who keeps dying early. You still have 21 in raid. Very little adjustment has to be done, and everyone is warmed up.
Now for something a little more complicated. The raid as a whole is doing fine, but the boss isn’t dying.
Mythic 20- You can try and rotate your players in, make sure you have your best team in. You have limited opportunity for adjustment, and any change will require bringing new people in, which again requires a warm up period. 2 people are still sitting.
Mythic Flex- You have many more options for adjustment. You can keep pulling with the same team, or drop the lowest dps players. If you were worried about an optimal raid size, this is the time that it would come into effect. Just for the sake of the argument, let us assume that 18 is the optimum, and that we make the decision to sit 4 people. Now 4 people are sitting, for the first time of the night.
Now let us assume you kill the boss. It is likely to take less pulls if we have made the decision to drop to 18 with the flex difficulty vs the 20. I can see how this would bother you from a leaderboard standpoint, but from the perspective of the players sitting on the bench, this isn’t as bad because the tradeoff is less time sitting on the bench, because:
Now you are beginning progression on a new boss.
Mythic 20- You have to bench 2 people, using whichever sytem you desire. 2 people are on the bench, where they are not gaining experience on handling mechanics or your strategies. Every time you rotate, you will lose some progress on getting the bench players up to speed.
Mythic Flex- You will raid with everyone, so that they are all gaining experience on the fight. At this point it is more valuable for the guild for everyone to get the experience than for you to target an optimal raid size.
Now let us talk about Day 2 of the raid night: One of your raiders has a sick kid. Another is traveling for work. Two others are partners, and have a family event they cannot skip. You have 18 people.
Mythic 20- You need 2 people to be able to play. You have to find people willing to come in for a full night of progression. With current raid lockouts, this is basically impossible, other than possibly people you have connections with. If the raid lockout were to change, then you could try and pug people, which is still a nightmare on later mythic bosses. Either way, you are going to be spending a decent amount of time waiting around looking for people, if you are even able to play.
Mythic Flex- You raid with 18.
This situation it is very easy to see the better solution.
Essentially, the only time you need to worry about people being dropped to hit an optimal size is at the very end of progression. In every other case, the smarter play is to have all of your players in. And then on subsequent clears, once you have the boss down, you will no longer need to drop players to that optimal number either. Dropping to an optimal size is only the smart play under very specific circumstances.
Who do you think is the primary audience? Is it people who want to challenge themselves on the highest difficulty, or is it people who care about leaderboards?
The only advantage of a hard 20 person cap is that you know every guild did the exact same fight. But even then, composition matters, some fights will be easier for guilds with more immunes, or more DKs, or more ranged, or a multitude of different factors. So comparisions are easier, but still not exact.
Meanwhile, if your target audience is raiding guilds who want to challenge themselves, the 20 person cap puts a lot of artificial barriers into the way for the guilds to handle that lessen the enjoyment of the game. The difficulty is not about the fights, but about the roster management and interpersonal dynamics. Flex would be a better experience for guilds that have a motivation of playing together and enjoying the game and challenge, and not just for comparing themselves to other guilds.
Personally I don’t think leaderboards should be the primary audience, although I’m willing to compromise by keeping things stuck on 20 for the HOF. But really, after that, who really cares?