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Q u o t e:
1. No add fights. Can't have a fight with more than 2 Non-CCable adds, or the tanks would become overwhelmed (when i say adds, i dont mean 2 extra trash mobs that pull with the boss, i mean add fights like Karathress or HKM).

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25 man version - "RAWR! TANK US ALL OR WE WIPE YOUR RAID!"

10 man version - "I'll just sit back here and watch you guys fight. YOU KILLED MY FRIEND?! I MUST ENTER THE BATTLE NOW! TANK ME OR I WIPE YOUR RAID!"

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Q u o t e:


25 man version - "RAWR! TANK US ALL OR WE WIPE YOUR RAID!"

10 man version - "I'll just sit back here and watch you guys fight. YOU KILLED MY FRIEND?! I MUST ENTER THE BATTLE NOW! TANK ME OR I WIPE YOUR RAID!"

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wats the point of even having multiple mobs, might as well just have 1 boss with different phases

just to call it an "adds fight"? thats not what an adds fight is.

An adds fight is a fight in which you must defeat multiple boss-dificulty mobs.

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Q u o t e:

That's about right. You post that you think loot quality should be based on the difficulty of the encounter, and that's a valid ideal, but Blizzard has some other reasons for awarding loot than assigning an appropriate reward for individual successes against encounters or players. They have to, for the continued health of the game.

One of those reasons is to draw people into playing certain kinds of content. If both encounter sizes were equally challenging, equally rewarding and equally fun, then people wouldn't play through the 25 player version, since it's more work out-of-game for the same fun, and the bigger raid forces are necessarily more fragile than smaller ones. So they've got to give a little more incentive to do the extra scut work and keep talking your prima donna players (who always seem to be playing a class and spec you need to beat the next encounter) off the ledges week after week.

WoW isn't, strictly speaking, an effort or success rewarding application. Its developers use equipment upgrades to serve other ends than those, and this is one case in which they're squeezed between that ideal and the need to appropriately incentivize content to insure acceptable playthrough.

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I can see this and mostly agree.

What we have is the customers wanting more 10 man raids, the ability to see all the content and equal value rewards, and the company wanting to find a way to make the customers play the game the way it wants them to instead.

The company can get away with that only so long as another company does not come in and give the customers a greater degree of what the customer wants.

It is good we can essentially agree on some things.

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Q u o t e:


wats the point of even having multiple mobs, might as well just have 1 boss with different phases

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Yeah! Let's get rid of all the adds on FLK and just have 1 boss with 4 phases! That will be WAY more fun!

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Q u o t e:


Yeah! Let's get rid of all the adds on FLK and just have 1 boss with 4 phases! That will be WAY more fun!

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well the way you described the 10 man version of the boss, thats what it sounds like

you could not scale down karathress

you cannot scale down add fights. the only way to scale them down is to remove adds. if you remove adds you trivialize the encounter.

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Q u o t e:
You should have been around when we had to do 40 mans. 25 mans are EZ mode in comparison.

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QFT

i remember trying to organize 40 people at once.. ah that was hell.

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Q u o t e:


well the way you described the 10 man version of the boss, thats what it sounds like

you could not scale down karathress

you cannot scale down add fights. the only way to scale them down is to remove adds. if you remove adds you trivialize the encounter.

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I was talking about a way to reduce a fight that requires 4 tanks to one that requires only 2, as in going from a 25 man to a 10 man. Yes, you can scale down FLK to a 10 man if 2 of the adds remained inactive until another was dead (of course scaling down their health pools and damage as well).

Or you could (god forbid) require a PALADIN TANK to take care of all of the bosses (scaling down the damage to an appropriate level).

A raid boss in a 25 man environment can be made to be more complex and, in turn, more difficult because of the amount of people involved.

10 man fights, by default, have to be less complex because of the number of people involved. Does this equate to it being easier? Maybe not, but it doesn't require the same sort of stratagem that the 25 man version of the encounter does.

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Q u o t e:



I was talking about a way to reduce a fight that requires 4 tanks to one that requires only 2, as in going from a 25 man to a 10 man. Yes, you can scale down FLK to a 10 man if 2 of the adds remained inactive until another was dead (of course scaling down their health pools and damage as well).

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more like the 10 man encounter of karathress would just have him start with all three abilities and turn it into a tank and spank.

while your suggestions is...plausable, that is the more likely way that blizzard would scale it down.

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Q u o t e:


more like the 10 man encounter of karathress would just have him start with all three abilities and turn it into a tank and spank.

while your suggestions is...plausable, that is the more likely way that blizzard would scale it down.

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I think Blizz is more likely to take an all or nothing approach, either use an idea like mine or don't have any add fights at all.

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Q u o t e:


I can see this and mostly agree.

What we have is the customers wanting more 10 man raids, the ability to see all the content and equal value rewards, and the company wanting to find a way to make the customers play the game the way it wants them to instead.

The company can get away with that only so long as another company does not come in and give the customers a greater degree of what the customer wants.

It is good we can essentially agree on some things.

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If what you said before is true in regards to the 10 man availability post 25 man clear I will side with you on this issue to an extent. That becomes an issue with gateway raiding.

Otherwise I'd be inclined to say that though the effort in a 10 man or a 25 man may be the same on paper in terms of execution, I've yet to engage a 10 man that took nearly the same time on a given gear level as a 25 man raid (assuming gear levels were on par for both). The point being that the time sync differs between the two, and even if the encounters require the same level of execution from players, the chances of a mistake grow with a larger base of players. This isn't just variables that are within the players control, but those that are outside of their control (disconnects, lag spikes, comp freeze).

When encounters have become so fine tuned that it requires near perfect execution and these variables can ruin the encounter it becomes a problem.

If I could scale down Kalecgos to be a 10 man encounter I can assure you it'd be a much more simple fight; less chance of someone missing a portal rotation, entering too soon and getting SB volley gibbed. Look to Felmyst, less chance of random moron "x" to not move from the dusting (lololololol) or be beamed during the final flight phase to make sure you catch the DPS (it's bee 2 months since I've been in SWP, so Felmyst enrage deaths were more common).

What I think you'll see is that the instances supplement each other. ZA carried some of the best trinkets you could possibly muster, and I think it'll come back with the same purpose in the expansion. Raids are supposed to be stepping stones, and you'd be hard pressed to prove to me that a 10 man requires more execution than a 25 man. This is my experience, anyway, and is subjective. What this does usher in is an age where players can keep progressing while pushing 25 man content in a casual fashion.

Good stuff in my book. Unless you can't access the 10 man before clearing the 25. In which case it's utter bull!@!@.

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Q u o t e:


The 25 person raid dungeons are likely to have more difficult encounters, on top of the logistical aspect, because with more players available there will be more things going on that they will have to adapt to.

I'm curious though, since both 10 person and 25 person dungeons will have their own progression lines, why do people doing only 10 person dungeons need to have their loot match the 25 person dungeons? The goal is to have the items dropped from the 10 person versions be fully sufficient to gear up and allow a group to continue progressing without forcing you into the 25 person version (and vice versa).



We haven't made a final decision on how one will affect the other. Stay tuned for more details in the future.



We always appreciate feedback from our players and we will see if any changes are needed based on feedback we receive in the future.

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Thank you for the response.

About the gear/rewards....I want to see all the game, and it does seem Blizzard is making that possible. I cannot speak for others, but if I knew that I could obtain gear with more capability from doing the 25 mans than from doing the 10 mans, I would feel a need to do the 25 mans.

You seem to ask why, since I would get to see the game via 10 mans. Well, if I got the better gear, then farming and helping friends would be easier, my character would be “more progressed”, and the reality of the game is that a character whose armory shows them with more powerful gear is generally seen as having achieved more in the game, and as being more progressed.

True, such “achievement” can be belittled, can be said to be immaterial, and can be said to be of value solely in an egotistical way. But, part of the enjoyment of the game for me is overcoming it and reaching the top levels. I would not feel I had done that, if when I finished the 10 mans, there were better and higher rewards I could get for doing the 25 mans.

Maybe its just me, maybe its egotistical, but for me it is still part of the fun of the game.

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Q u o t e:


The 25 person raid dungeons are likely to have more difficult encounters, on top of the logistical aspect, because with more players available there will be more things going on that they will have to adapt to.

I'm curious though, since both 10 person and 25 person dungeons will have their own progression lines, why do people doing only 10 person dungeons need to have their loot match the 25 person dungeons? The goal is to have the items dropped from the 10 person versions be fully sufficient to gear up and allow a group to continue progressing without forcing you into the 25 person version (and vice versa).



We haven't made a final decision on how one will affect the other. Stay tuned for more details in the future.



We always appreciate feedback from our players and we will see if any changes are needed based on feedback we receive in the future.

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So that's in contradiction with what was said before:

The goal with the 10 and 25 thing is not that we want to have sort of easy mode and that's 10, and then hard mode and that's 25. We really do just want to have two separate, clear progressions. And even within those we want to have easy 10 and 25 raids, and then medium 10 and 25, and hard 10 and 25; we want to have progression through those.

http://wow.curse.com/articles/details/9636/

10-man clearly isn't "easier" on the encounter level, nor does it have to be.

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Q u o t e:
I'm curious though, since both 10 person and 25 person dungeons will have their own progression lines, why do people doing only 10 person dungeons need to have their loot match the 25 person dungeons? The goal is to have the items dropped from the 10 person versions be fully sufficient to gear up and allow a group to continue progressing without forcing you into the 25 person version (and vice versa).

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I'm actually one of the 10-man only players, in a 10-man only guild. We've completed all 10-man content, including 4 chests in ZA. The timed run element effectively added a 3rd 10-man objective, which was nice. Anyway, as long as you're providing an alternate progression path, it's fine if the items are not as good.

Hopefully that progression can stay ahead of honor-based weapon rewards two seasons behind arena-based weapon rewards. I'm holding an unenchanted Heartless, for example, which is the best pve sword available from 10-mans at this point, but worse than a S2 sword, and we're now in S4. If you catch my drift.

We don't need the best gear. Other people doing other things that I never want to do can get that, and I don't really care. But it would be nice to continue to get better gear doing what we do. We're getting bears, but there's nothing above ZA for us, and ZA seems targeted for a year ago. Character progression is the point. Looking forward to killing that new boss, accomplishing that new task, and getting that item better than the one before.

Sounds like what you're aiming for with WotLK, with a lot more 10-man opportunities, so I hope that's what we see.

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Q u o t e:
I'm curious though, since both 10 person and 25 person dungeons will have their own progression lines, why do people doing only 10 person dungeons need to have their loot match the 25 person dungeons? The goal is to have the items dropped from the 10 person versions be fully sufficient to gear up and allow a group to continue progressing without forcing you into the 25 person version (and vice versa).

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I think it's a matter of perception. I think if the loot in the 25s was categorically better than the stuff in the tens - that is, if the stuff in the first 25 man in the 25 player progression was better than ten man Arthas loot - then the perception will be that the progression is still tiered, that players are expected to graduate from 10 to 25 player content. We've seen from classic that players don't really want to feel that their options for progressive play are narrowing down to raiding or buggering off.

If the "one tier down" idea is preserved, and ten man Arthas loot is of the same quality as 25 man <insert whatever encounter is one tier beneath Arthas in the 25 man arc> loot, then the perception will instead be that the two content arcs are indeed a playstyle choice - branches on a tree instead of rungs on a ladder we're expected to all climb, by and by. I'm sure people will still complain about Little Arthas loot being inferior to Big Arthas loot (or about it not being inferior enough, depending on which extreme you champion,) but generally people will be happy with the option to get the second best PvE loot in the game by carving a path through the small party raid content arc.

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Q u o t e:

I think it's a matter of perception. I think if the loot in the 25s was categorically better than the stuff in the tens - that is, if the stuff in the first 25 man in the 25 player progression was better than ten man Arthas loot - then the perception will be that the progression is still tiered, that players are expected to graduate from 10 to 25 player content. We've seen from classic that players don't really want to feel that their options for progressive play are narrowing down to raiding or buggering off.

If the "one tier down" idea is preserved, and ten man Arthas loot is of the same quality as 25 man <insert whatever encounter is one tier beneath Arthas in the 25 man arc> loot, then the perception will instead be that the two content arcs are indeed a playstyle choice - branches on a tree instead of rungs on a ladder we're expected to all climb, by and by. I'm sure people will still complain about Little Arthas loot being inferior to Big Arthas loot (or about it not being inferior enough, depending on which extreme you champion,) but generally people will be happy with the option to get the second best PvE loot in the game by carving a path through the small party raid content arc.

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stop focusing on the loot, the point is that you get to see all the content even if you can only get a 10 man raid together.

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Q u o t e:
stop focusing on the loot, the point is that you get to see all the content even if you can only get a 10 man raid together.

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Loot is absolutely incidental to what I posted. So is my position on the subject, which wasn't even expressed or implied.

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Q u o t e:

I think it's a matter of perception. I think if the loot in the 25s was categorically better than the stuff in the tens - that is, if the stuff in the first 25 man in the 25 player progression was better than ten man Arthas loot - then the perception will be that the progression is still tiered, that players are expected to graduate from 10 to 25 player content. We've seen from classic that players don't really want to feel that their options for progressive play are narrowing down to raiding or buggering off.

If the "one tier down" idea is preserved, and ten man Arthas loot is of the same quality as 25 man <insert whatever encounter is one tier beneath Arthas in the 25 man arc> loot, then the perception will instead be that the two content arcs are indeed a playstyle choice - branches on a tree instead of rungs on a ladder we're expected to all climb, by and by. I'm sure people will still complain about Little Arthas loot being inferior to Big Arthas loot (or about it not being inferior enough, depending on which extreme you champion,) but generally people will be happy with the option to get the second best PvE loot in the game by carving a path through the small party raid content arc.

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I think the question is why is it better? Many encounters in ZA & Kara are harder than a number of 25-man encounters.

If the gear differential is based on the logistics of getting 25 people together, I'd say that's kind of weak. If it's based on difficulty, I'd ask why? It doesn't need to be easier and Blizzard said it wouldn't be easier.