Essay on the Future of WoW and Raiding by Ciderhelm

[7F]LarryBoy

[7F]LarryBoy

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http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?63802-Surprise-Risk-Reward-Challenge-Discovery

Ciderhelm (administrator of Tankspot) posted this excellent piece on what he feels are some current problems with raids, and their potential long-term effects on the game. Now, unlike a lot of the recent "QQ WoW is too easy vanilla was the best" posts, Ciderhelm clearly and concisely lays out his arguments and supporting facts, and even *shock and awe* offers solutions!

Anyway, I thought it a good read, even though I don't agree 100% with him. Check it out!
 
You have to keep in mind that he has played the game at a much higher level than most people. For him, and for a lot of the more hardcore raiders, raiding probably HAS lost a lot of the surprise and challenge.

I would agree that surprise is almost non-existent. Usually in 2-3 wipes you can break down boss mechanics to components that you've seen before, and therefore probably know how to beat. This is probably more or less the fault of raiders themselves. They don't like things to be too random, or else you can't guaranteed consistent, grindy kills. Also now we have popular datamining sites like Wowhead and MMO-C, who can fairly quickly make educated guessing on boss abilities just by looking at spells added to the files. You also have a lot of coverage of the PTRs by these same sites, so that raids are forming and publishing strats against them before they're even released.

I was thinking the other day, what if Blizzard did what they did for Diablo 2...bosses with random enchantments and abilities that change from week to week...it would certainly make things more surprising. Lightning Enchanted Extra Strong Teleporting Saurfang anyone?

Personally, I am finding ICC a good challenge for my 10 man group. It's far from boring. The later wing bosses are probably about the perfect level of difficulty - not impossible, but hard enough that if we make even a few mistakes, we wipe.
 
Yet despite the lack of surprise, how many people have seen the Lich King dead on the floor? ;)
 
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I'm not saying he's wrong. First boss SGA kills in Vanilla WoW and BC felt way more epic than first boss kills in Wrath. I do echo the comments by at least one that the 'every raid has a 10- and 25- mode' almost seems to cheapen the experience.

While the ability to buy a full set of 'T10-lite' cheapens the overall WoW experience, as an insignificant raider, I like the ability of being able to run (admittedly a ton of) heroics to be able to pick up baseline gear to be welcome. :)
 
[7F]LarryBoy;371746 said:
You have to keep in mind that he has played the game at a much higher level than most people. For him, and for a lot of the more hardcore raiders, raiding probably HAS lost a lot of the surprise and challenge
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So have I. Mind you, that was back in Classic WoW.

I would agree that surprise is almost non-existent. Usually in 2-3 wipes you can break down boss mechanics to components that you've seen before, and therefore probably know how to beat. This is probably more or less the fault of raiders themselves. They don't like things to be too random, or else you can't guaranteed consistent, grindy kills. Also now we have popular datamining sites like Wowhead and MMO-C, who can fairly quickly make educated guessing on boss abilities just by looking at spells added to the files. You also have a lot of coverage of the PTRs by these same sites, so that raids are forming and publishing strats against them before they're even released.
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Surprise is a problem for those of us (read: me) who are addicted to datamining sites.

But my major disagreement with Ciderhelm is that there are "no new mechanics in WotLK" except perhaps ones that can be avoided by movement.

When you think about it, he's very wrong, with one caveat:
Mechanics from Sunwell and from Naxx40 don't count. Even the top 1% of players haven't seen those mechanics; the top 0.15% are the only players who saw past the first 3 bosses in either of those places.

Naxx sports an large number of bosses with new mechanics that don't involve movement: Loatheb, Grand Widow, Maexxna, Loatheb, whoever the live/dead side boss was, 4 Horse, Putr--the gas cloud guy, Gluth, and Saphirron.

The glass cloud guy WAS essentially a "move out of the way" fight, but I consider it new because the deciding factor in that fight is not where you move, but where you moved a minute ago.

Obsidian Sanctum had a relatively new setup, although I agree that the portals were recycled from C'thun.

I think Malygos' 3rd phase was a fail design, but phase 2 is definitely unique in my experience (may have shown up in the second half of Black Temple.)

Ulduar did have a bit of a lack of non- "move" mechanics, but...
FL is about the best vehicle fight (only good vehicle fight?) Blizzard has made.
Ignis has new mechanics that aren't just "move."
Kologarn has new mechanics other than that they seem very close to Ignis's.
Freya's mechanics are a fair bit different as well.

I do admit that list is a lot shorter than Naxxramas's;

TOC, very short, sports:
The Beasts, in which 2/3 of the bosses have different and fairly fresh mechanics.
The Horde/Alliance, which is pretty well brand new (and a surprise.)
The Twin Val'kyr.
Anub.2.0, in which the "move" mechanic is a bit different because of the "where to?" mechanic of the icy spheres. And he also has that nasty healing mechanic in hard mode.

ICC has a large number of non-move mechanics.

I was thinking the other day, what if Blizzard did what they did for Diablo 2...bosses with random enchantments and abilities that change from week to week...it would certainly make things more surprising. Lightning Enchanted Extra Strong Teleporting Saurfang anyone?
Click to expand...

I agree, but it would be impossible to balance. Lightning Enchanted Marrowgar would be impossible. Teleporting Festergut would make it nearly impossible to kill him in time. Teleporting or Lightning Enchanted bosses would really really stop melee from being viable.

On the flip side, in ICC you have weekly quests that pop up randomly in the game. That adds randomness with a positive reward for a higher risk.

Personally, I am finding ICC a good challenge for my 10 man group. It's far from boring. The later wing bosses are probably about the perfect level of difficulty - not impossible, but hard enough that if we make even a few mistakes, we wipe.
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ICC is truly great, in that it is a challenge at the level of pretty much every player. I do agree with Cider that they should have opened the hard modes at the same time (or in less time) than the regular. Maybe the hard modes should have come out the week after?

And I agree that hard modes should have different mechanics than the normals. If hard-mode Marrowgar, for example, caused his spike target to explode for massive damage if the spike is destroyed before the next spike or the bone storm is cast (say an 8-second window of don't kill it,) that's hard AND new.

--------------------------------------------

So is Cider all bunk?

No.

Cider's point about Essential Roles is good. He also tempers it with the opinion that Essential Roles should be given away to different roles but not specific classes.

Good essential role: Guns on Gunship battle, Orb in Razorgore.
Bad essential role: Priests MCing students in Naxx25.

Different hard-mode to easy-mode mechanics are also a plus.

You can also try not to use datamining sites, if you like.
 
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Moredhel said:
While the ability to buy a full set of 'T10-lite' cheapens the overall WoW experience, as an insignificant raider, I like the ability of being able to run (admittedly a ton of) heroics to be able to pick up baseline gear to be welcome. :)
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I'll disagree. It actually increases the ability for people to have an overall WoW raid experience :)
 
All I was saying is that you can get T10-lite without having to set foot in a raid. If it enhances your raiding experience, then good! But it removes the need to raid at all for decent gear. :)
 
What if they colored the lowest quality of each tier blue?

Blizzard balances gear against the time required to acquire the item. A full clear of ICC takes probably 6 hours (probably even less once things are on farm) and nets you 25 Emblems of Frost (or 26 if Arthas gives you extra). There is also the option of gaining 5 more from the weekly ICC raid quest.

Running 1 Random heroic a day gives you 2 Emblems of Frost, and generally takes less than 30 minutes. There's also the weekly raid quest which is another 5 emblems, and probably takes no more than 1 hour. For roughly the same amount of time spent as a full ICC clear, you get almost the same number of Emblems of Frost.
 
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One thing I appreciated is that Ciderhelm really didn't touch on loot at all in his article, except to briefly mention that Blizzard has done a most excellent job of balancing effort vs. reward, and a small comment warning that lack of challenge cheapens rewards.
 
I'm not saying that the risk-vs-reward isn't balanced around perceived time. I think it is. But from a (former) hardcore raider perspective, I can look at the current structure and say, "Gee, I can go into random heroics every day and get frost emblems without having to deal with twice (or five times) as many crotchety people to get frost emblems with..." Said person will in the end have just as many emblems as someone who exclusively raids every week, but the person who just uses heroics to get gear is not going to have to experience the frustration of the massively undergeared person who's a friend/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend of the raid leader who shouldn't be in the raid, but is because it is not a battle you're going to win...

I won't begrudge the fact that you can indeed get that uber gear because I intend on taking advantage of it being that I'm not in a regular raid group at all right now... I can, however, see it from the perspective of someone who only wants to raid and only wants to see tier gear in the hands of "real raiders". There are some people who truly feel that T10-lite is not earned. Most of those people are in the top 5% to 10% of the WoW population, generally the same people who are in raiding guilds...
 
I might feel that T9 lite isn't earned, but we're one content level past it.

T10 lite, at 60-90 badges a shot, is earned.

Given a maximum of 12 badges a week without raiding current content, it's 5 weeks to a lesser piece. That's a fair bit of dedication.
 
<Pokes head in!>

I read the article up until the "Risk: The Normal Mode Paradigm & The Top 1%" portion... then the TL;DR-ADD kicked in and I was a goner... haha.

I agree with what he said up until that point, especially with the repetitive boss mechanics and the burn out high-performing, end-game guild members experience.

On Stonemaul, Alliance during Vanilla WoW (WoW's best time period IMO), I was in an end-game raiding guild and loved it. My guild (Holicron Knights) was one of only 3 or 4 Alliance guilds on the server progressing in Naxxramas and the only reason an Alliance guild on Stonemaul downed KT was because my guild, along with others, donated our Frost whatevers (forgot what they were really called, but they were needed for FrR during Sapp and KT encounters).

When BC rolled around it killed our guild. Going from being able to field 40 man raids regularly to having to downsize to 20 mans was very hard... too hard... impossible hard. Most of my guild was also disappointed with how easy the raids seemed after having so much success in Vanilla WoW (Karazhan was a cool place, but it got really boring fast). The result was people either left HK for other guilds or left the game entirely.

Made me a sad panda. :(

<Unpokes head!>
 
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