ITT: A priest who raids with 10 and not 25 lobbies for his gear to be better in the xpac. Priest fails to understand greater difficulty and time involved in organizing 25 people instead of 10, probably because of never having done it. Selfish backpatting ensues.

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Q u o t e:



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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We did every boss in ZA on our kara alts on the first day it was out and I will be the first to say that ZA is an extremely difficult 10 man instance.

Difficulty in video games is pretty much measured in actions per second and reactions per second (As well as a meta game of "gear" before hand, allowing for less of those two). The simple fact is that a developer can add many more required actions per second for a 25 person raid, because he has more players with which to distribute the actions/que's.

For example, I don't think people will argue that ZJ is much much harder than Gruul, however, what they can do to make ZJ even harder is more of a question of "gear" rather than complexity. You can't exactly add 50 adds during each transition, as you can't count on 2-3 tanks, or enough healers to sustain a paladin tank, right?

Saying that a 10 man "doesn't have to be" easier than a 25 man is only a true statement if the 25 man is not being tuned to be harder..Both have caps where even "good" players won't be able to sustain the operations required to succeed, if the developers try pushing 10 mans past that "cap" just so its "as" hard as the 25 man, it won't be accessible to anyone anyway.

Yeah, 25 mans need more incentive to do it than just to say that they did it. They do deserve to have slightly better rewards just for actually getting the 25 of them together.

If the rewards were the same, I seriously doubt anyone would even bother doing a 25 man.

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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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Do you really not see an issue with setting such a gear gap like the current arena system. ITs really stupid to give such advantages to people unless there is a small difference of say 10Item levels.

The Current Gearing system is so broken its not even funny and you guys better shape the hell up and fix it for this new expansion.

I think it's pretty obviously why 25 mans should give better gear than 10-mans. IF the gear was the same, nobody would run 25-mans. Why get 25 people together on time, geared, skilled, buffed, and with potions, when you can only get 10? People need incentive to do something that is more difficult. Organizing 25 people is more difficult than 10. If you say, "But since the 25 man gear is better I want to run that!!!" Well, do it then. But there are plenty of people who run in a more tight-knit group and only want to run 10-mans, even if the gear isn't as great.

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Q u o t e:


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.

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Blizzard has explained the added complexity of the encounters argument. They are trying to make the larger raid encounters more complex than the smaller ones, because more players means more players can do more things at once. There is a higher difficulty in getting 25 players to play competently at the same time, which was also expressed mathematically in this thread. The social and organizational problems that arise with the addition of more players is real, and also identified in this thread.

As long as the encounter difficulty and associated rewards are progressing logically in 10-man content, it's perfectly fine that the larger raid content has the best gear. One tier behind, for example, seems right. Three tiers behind, which is where the top 10-man content (ZA aside from 3rd chest), is now.. that's what needs work. We need more content for the 10s in order to maintain some sort of progression parity. Badges are a weak substitute for actual content. This is something WotLK appears to be trying to address.

Absolutely some top notch thought and posts in this thread. And thanks for the blue responses.

It makes sense that the gear rewards need to be slightky better, because otherwise, who would do 25 man raids.

Therein is a point. Given the chance to see the game from either a 10 man or a 25 man raid route......and given that the difficulty would be roughly the same.....except logistically....and that the gear rewards would be the same....most everyone would agree that the great majority would prefer the 10 man route.

I do not think Blizzard would lose money if it abandoned 25 man raids entirely. In fact, I think it would make more money.

So why not just spend the resources on MORE and BETTER 10 man raids, and just forget the 25 man raids?

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Q u o t e:


I'm not sure this is true. there are many 25 man encounters in which if 1 person dies, it is basically over. I'd say that is less forgiving.

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That's just encounter design. 10 mans can be constructed that way.

It's much easier to "pick up the slack" in a 25 man then it is in a 10 man.

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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).......

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The main reason why the loot would have to match is because people running 25 person would come back to the 10 man version with the 25 person gear and own it for badges and mounts (i.e. Kara & ZA) and then discount the success of people running 10 man progression calling it easy mode, and lessening the satisfaction of 10 man progression groups to the point where they become a lower "class" of wow players... I.e. LOLCASUAL or LOLWELFAREEPICS...

This is why many people want the gear and difficult to match in the 10 to 25 man version.

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Q u o t e:
ITT: A priest who raids with 10 and not 25 lobbies for his gear to be better in the xpac. Priest fails to understand greater difficulty and time involved in organizing 25 people instead of 10, probably because of never having done it. Selfish backpatting ensues.

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So which 10 man raids did I get my Tier 6 from?

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What advantages do you encounter relating to this? I'm just curious based on your personal play experience.

I'm a little confused on your example as well because we have said previously that the gear difference will be about 1 tier and yet you say it like 10 item levels is vastly different than this.

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T4 = ilvl 120, T5 = ilvl 133, T6 = ilvl 146

So 10 ilvl's isn't very far off.

So 1 Teir is 13 ilvl's

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Q u o t e:

We added a lot of item related things like the Arena and Badges of Justice in The Burning Crusade. After seeing how these things worked out we have a much better grasp on these things and we feel they will work out smoother when we have more solid plans involving them from the very launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

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This time, hold on to your itemization department.
The people that itemized Naxx did it well.
Then whoever itemized T4(/T5? can't remember) originally just completely dropped the ball.
Don't let this happen again.

Before I go into this, I would just like to say how refreshing it was to read an intellegent, mature discourse on this subject in the forums, rarely happens often.

On topic, 10 man raiders are inherently simplier than 25 mans, but only in the specific case of it being the exact same encounter. Yes, ZA is a challenging place and has some difficult bosses, but it would be inherently mre difficult as a 25 man raid instance.

Now, as to the question of whether or not 25 man deserve inherently supieor loot, I think that they do, but there is a middle ground that has to be reached. Simply put, having the difference in T7 chest be 1 ilvl is not really fair to the people doing the inherently harder 25 mans. That's not to say that 10 man raiders don't deserve good loot, but they deserve loot tuned for content that like Blizzard has said 'is one tier level lower'. 10 mans are about seeing content anyway, which was the primary complaint many (not all) people had regarding 25 man content lock out in the first place. Incediently, I don't think that 10 man raids will help with people seeing content (most of them anyway) but that's just me.

As for having the 25 man open the 10 man, I really see it was inconsiquential. Basically, this is the ZA bear mount situation for WoTLK. Blizzard acknowledges that it has a large amount (total, not percentage wise) who like large scale content, and Blizzard is throwing them a bone, basically saying 'we know we screwed you in TBC and we are preparing to screw you in WoTLK, so here, you can go first as a reminder that we do still care.'

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Q u o t e:


What advantages do you encounter relating to this? I'm just curious based on your personal play experience.

I'm a little confused on your example as well because we have said previously that the gear difference will be about 1 tier and yet you say it like 10 item levels is vastly different than this.



We added a lot of item related things like the Arena and Badges of Justice in The Burning Crusade. After seeing how these things worked out we have a much better grasp on these things and we feel they will work out smoother when we have more solid plans involving them from the very launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

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I very hope that it will be a bigger difference between the PVP gears and the PVE gears since the gears you get from PVE it much more harder to get than the PVP one (since it costs a lot more golds and times to get).

Indeed, who says they are going to be equal difficulty? The bigger dungeons are likely to be harder, if for no other reason than the fact that 25 people have more options available to them to react to different situations, so they can deal with more difficult things or more problems ocurring at the same time. I don't think this is going to be the same as something like ZA vs TK, where the gear is about the same level. The 10 and 25 are going to be the same instance, but different things will be thrown at groups in each version, so it won't just be a matter of quantity.

I think UBRS was a favorite of most people. Karas and ZA sort of took the idea of 10 man raiding to the next level. Eventually all of these can be pugged. A well geared experienced guild with time on their hands would get bored and want to progress. 25 man (40 man in old days) had the big bosses, big encounters and the tiered loot.

But badge loot, PvP gear (for many but not all classes) and in some cases heroic drops can substitute for the tiered loot. This will reduce the numbers of people who will want to farm mats and gold needed for full time raiding. Another reason 10 mans are more popular.

As far as the casual player playing 3 hours a week on Sunwell, I cry BS. It took alot of time to get to the point where a raiding group can get SW on farm. Maybe now that a large well geared knows all the encounters, then maybe, if the guild allows casual players to just do SW.

Im here just to see if Wrath improves on the game. Burned out on the grind, hoping some content makes playing this game worthwhile.