05-29-2008, 08:16 AM
Quote:The benifits of this for raiding guilds wouldn't stop there either (and this benefit will be seen to some degree just with the inclusion of the 10 player versions). Because it will be much easier to gear up other members of your guild so that they are on the same level of the progression curve. The disparity between the gear of the raiders in any guild and the rest of the guild has always been a problem and it only hurts a guild when it is more efficient to recruit outside "mercenary" raiders to keep doing content instead of helping the members you already have progress up the curve.
Well, I agree that having 10 mans drop same-tier loot would be better for 25-man raid guilds, and thereby presumably better for 10 manners who want a boost up to 25-man raids. But that doesn't seem to be a compelling argument for exclusive ten-mans of equivalent overall difficulty and higher individual requirements, which is a prerequisite for equal-tier loot. How many of these people are there? Moreover, how many of these people would there be if loot was equal-tier?
You've said a lot of things that are mostly true, but they aren't adding up to an argument as to why you think 10-mans should be made equally difficult at the cost of accessibility. You talk of the gateways to endgame like a ladder, but I'm not sure the analogy fits, because you don't encounter barriers to raiding sequentially. You encounter them simultaneously, and any one of them can stop a player from entering the endgame. If you don't have the time, you're done, even if you have the skill and social comfort level. If you don't have the skill, you are also likewise stopped, even if you have time. And so forth.
Therefore, making it easier to satisfy one condition while making it harder to satisfy another doesn't accomplish anything. The obstacle hasn't been removed, just moved to a different spot on the path. It's still in the way. Blizzard also realizes that barriers to end-game tend to occur together, hence the stereotype of "casual" players. Obviously not everyone is like this, but people who aren't comfortable in 25-man groups tend not to have very much time. People without much time tend not to have much skill, and so on.
Making ten-mans easier is an elegant solution that brings all the barriers down at once. You need less people, you need less time, you need less skill. And to preserve the challenge-for-reward dynamic, you get worse loot. There's nothing flawed or inconsistent about this.