May News/Discussions

[Lissa]

Could you elaborate on what the pros of having entry-level raiding be 25s and high-end being 10s is? I don't see any thoughts on why it would be better, just that Blizzard could do things that way if they'd like. And, I mean, Blizzard could do anything they'd like:P

Look at what entry level raiding was in 1.0. For a very long time it was Onyxia, around 1.5 they introduced Zul'Gurub, but in overall skill, Onyxia was still easier. Overtime, people started taking less and less people to Onyxia because they figured it out as taking 40 people became overkill (and the only reason to bring 40 eventually is to reduce kill time to the extreme).

If you look at tBC at launch, the only raid instance that required no attunements was Gruul's lair. If you also look at the way Blizzard lays out difficulty based on the tokens, Gruul's lair *should* have been easier than Karazhan (Maulgar should have been easier than Curator and Gruul should have been easier than Prince). (To show why this is the case, look at token layouts at present, for Tier 5 the gloves on Leotheras, the pants on FLK, shoulders on VR, hat on Vashj, and robe on Kael. Similarly for Tier 6 the gloves on are Azgalor, shoulders on Shahraz, pants on council, hat on Archimonde, and robe on Illidan. Difficulty for Blizzard has been shoulders -> gloves -> pants -> hat -> robe with shoulders and gloves sometimes being interchangeable.) The reason *why* Gruul's lair was more difficult than Karazhan in respects was because of bad tuning on Blizzard's part. They made the situation *too* difficulty and made it so people *had* to be buffed to the gills if they wanted a chance to succeed in the early raid instances. (Do you remember just what was required for Curator in the early days? People were going into that fight with every buff imaginable to have a chance against him.)

I think it's worth discussing because it moves beyond the scope of what chesspiece was talking about; meaning obtaining equal loot in 10s and 25s.

Edit to contribute: We've already hammered over why blizzard likely keeps the loot one tier behind (so the encounters can be justifiably easier, and thus accessible to more people). They could beef up the difficulty of 10s and have equal loot, leaving some current "casual" raiders without an end-game, but why would they make the easier to organize raid harder in skill and vice versa?

They could do that same by tuning the encounters for 10 man and then scale hit points and maybe damage done by mobs/bosses for 25 man, but they would be able to leave some slack. I don't buy Kaplan's comment about the social aspects as I only see marginally more people raiding the 10 mans than the 25 mans. A lot of the people you see raiding 10 mans that don't appear to be part of raid force that do 25 mans typically, but a large number of these people are alts of people that are raiding the 25 mans with their mains.

The other aspect that is being ignored by most is that there are a good number of people that *are* really good, but they can't stand dealing with 25 mans. Why should they be told that they can't have the challenge of a truly hardcore run at 10 man, why should they be forced to 25 man?

The way it currently is now, there's a ladder yes. But that ladder works - you climb it as much as your combination of skill, social ability and time dictate. If we flip 10s and 25s, then there's no ladder, just one plateau - if you have good social abilities and mediocre skill, you'd do 25s, if you have good skill and perhaps not as big of a circle of friends, 10s. Sure there'd be people that benefit from that situation, namely people with god skill and not as big of a circle of friends would be on bleeding edge progression. But I believe in the long run more people would lose out: the "loafers" with bad skill but lots of friends, the prototypical "casual" with four kids and a small circle of friends who has time for a one-night kara clear, but not progression encounters on a 10-man boss, etc.

IMO, the best solution for Blizzard would be to set normal and heroic levels to the instances. Make it so those people that want a truly hardcore experience can do the heroic level at either 10 man or 25 and get one level of loot higher than what normal would be. You then give the hardcore people the same amount of opportunity at which ever level they prefer while still leaving things open for the less skilled and more casual players to run either at 10 man or 25 man.