MMOs - A Raid Bench.

[Malakriss]

Fights that require perfection (or close to it) don't seem appealing. Bosses that are still badass enough to teabag people on a kill run are preferred. But for 25 man time capped fights everything has to go to script since they removed the buffer zone on people, so the mobs lose that hardcore element after a couple kills.

[Dandain]

Job system! Job System! Job System!

[James]

Originally Posted by Seryne

I also miss the romantic, good ol' days of 40 man caps where everyone was brought to raids and we never had to sit people out. My favorite encounter was most definitely the Four Horsemen, where we never had to sit anyone out for the 7 to 8 warriors it took to accomplish the task of killing them. I don't recall ever having to min-max for 40 man fights like Loatheb or Gothik either. Man, those days were great. Back in my day, if we didn't have 40 people on at night, we simply did these encounters with fewer people, because they were not encounters that required efficiency in raid composition.

I think you miss the point. 40 man raids were strictly better than 25 man raids, period. The examples you bring up to cast the 40 man template in a bad light are still examples in today's 25 man template where class stacking is a concern to the point that sometimes entire classes get to sit out in favor of a better one. 7 to 8 warriors for 4h, but oh, 5 tanks for Magtheridon...one for Leotheras.

Sure, those problems existed back in the day, but they are problems caused by class design and encounter design -- NOT raid size. Raid size determines things like organization, cohesion, recruitment, or in other words basically the entire meta game that 99% of the posters here play for. It affects things like encounter design allowing for more, different, varied, whatever mechanics to be thrown in, but is ultimately decided upon for the organizational aspect.

If a guild raids, they are either set up for it from the get go or they evolve into it. Either way, the raid size determines what type of structure you form. Whereas class leaders were popular positions for guilds to sport pre-BC, you may have noticed that many simply dropped the rank, or have limited their responsibilities to the point that they may as well be. Sometimes there's one damn class on a raid, which in WotLK will be made all the more likely if even in a fairly tale *perfectly* balanced world, who are they going to lead? Your recruitment is built around it -- attrition affects everyone and all but the most hardcore guilds run with a slightly inflated roster just to counter its effect. The gearing process is affected by it, less people + same amount of drops = greater gear saturation.

They don't reduce the raid size to make encounters any easier or harder, and I'd think that would have been proven by now. They do it to make guild organization easier. Have they, though? I think the leadership overhead is nearly the same, and now I don't get to share my excitement with killing a boss with 15 more people. Now we have to retool the entire 4h encounter because 2.5h just can't be done. Now I can't make layers of a leadership structure because then half the damn raid would be leadership. Now we give up all these cool things that we got inherently with MORE people because it's supposed to be easier to organize. 40 was the sweet spot number in EQ for many, many, many years until the designers caved in and started building encounters around bullshit amounts of raiders, and I'd submit it was for more reasons than just because we didn't have /serverfilter.


Anyway, sure, the examples mostly being brought up for 40 man > 25 man are complete bullshit. But that doesn't mean it's not true.

[Miele]

Wouldn't a feature such as free respecs coupled with gear more hybrid oriented be a possible solution?

Let's say I'm a shaman and I spam chain heal, but my gear has an equal amount of damage and healing, with a couple pieces to eventually swap for +hit or +crit (not an entire set of course) when appropriate (more a matter of min-maxing), thus at the cost of an astral recall and a soul shard I could be switching to damage in a few minutes. The same would be true for all classes that can cover 2 or even 3 different roles.

This would of course require a total rework of the item creation system, in order to give away cost-free stats, but allow more raid customization on the fly.

I still think a job system is better, but you'd still need two-three sets of gear. Free respecs would be a sort of job system, in a way. Meh, maybe it's undoable.

[Fadaar]

Originally Posted by Miele

Wouldn't a feature such as free respecs coupled with gear more hybrid oriented be a possible solution?

Let's say I'm a shaman and I spam chain heal, but my gear has an equal amount of damage and healing, with a couple pieces to eventually swap for +hit or +crit (not an entire set of course) when appropriate (more a matter of min-maxing), thus at the cost of an astral recall and a soul shard I could be switching to damage in a few minutes. The same would be true for all classes that can cover 2 or even 3 different roles.

This would of course require a total rework of the item creation system, in order to give away cost-free stats, but allow more raid customization on the fly.

I still think a job system is better, but you'd still need two-three sets of gear. Free respecs would be a sort of job system, in a way. Meh, maybe it's undoable.

Blame pvp for worthy hybrid sets not being available.

[Seryne]

I didn't miss any point. Just saying 40 mans are better than 25 mans is better "period" doesn't make it so. My guild was server first Magtheridon and we used 3 tanks back in the day (stun-lock first one with holy paladin tanking as necessary, 2 warriors on 2 mobs each with MD to establish initial aggro). I guess if my guild required 5 tanks to do Magtheridon and thus there was a huge crunch on DPS/healing spots in a 25 man, I'd probably think that 25 mans suck too--but we utilized people more efficiently, I suppose. We also tended to use 2 tanks on Leo because of the snap aggro feral offers on transition. Every single raid boss in 25-mans can be done with 2-3 tanks (of which one can be fury, anyway). So arguing that my point is invalid because of Magtheridon is off.

Raid size certainly constitutes an element this "meta game" you speak of--larger raid size tends to lead to more organization required, less social cohesion, more recruitment/turnover. However, just because you think 99% of the people here play to enjoy this meta-game doesn't mean its so, and even if it were so doesn't mean that a game should be based around what 99% of the posters on FOH think. I'm sure a majority of wow players would prefer less organization and more individual contribution towards raiding. I happen to like when I matter to a raid. I hated when raids could be carry 15 retards that you dragged along to make things slightly easier; fortunately, a paradigm that ended when Naxx arrived.

The reason why "class leaders" changed is not due to a move from 40 mans to 25 mans nearly as much as it can be contributed to the increased flexibility each class offers. Much of this class officer nonsense that you're heralding was a matter of the inability to do more than one role efficiently with any class. All this did is reduce the flexibility and satisfaction each individual can achieve in a raid environment. I have no doubts that the introduction of flexible class roles made the game more deep and interesting for everyone--I love me some shadow priest, feral druid, ret paladin, etc. More or less, this change had very little to do with the move from 40 to 25. I know that I played EQ and had class officers in 72 man raids and 14 man raids, and I know in EQ2 we had class officers in my guild that raided in 24s.

I'm also certain that there was attrition in 40 man guilds. How about "Vael the guild killer" who killed many-a 40 man raiding guilds back in the day? I know guilds ran rosters to have over 40 back then--in fact, one guild on my server had almost double the amount needed on at any given time. Obviously, gear is affected by it, and fortunately so, since anyone who has managed a guild should know by now that gear=happy raiders and happy raiders means more productive raids. It's a vicious cycle of yummyness.

I believe that every raid up until Naxx was easier because of the raid size. It's a fact that you could bring 15 deadbeats to almost every raid without much ado. Maybe you have fun managing certified morons, but as someone who dealt with a good chunk of them on a daily basis, I'd rather never have to go back to that. Managing 25 people is certainly easier than managing 40, a fact that is logically consistent with diminishing organizational leadership responsibility.

The amount of people present when a mob dies does not affect how pleased I am at the outcome, although I know you express otherwise. That's fair enough, if that's how you feel, but let me relate a story: When Doom Lord Kazzak was introduced to game, my guild killed it with 25 under some superstition that more than 25 could fuck us over. We later heard that many guilds simply brought assloads of people to kill it with 70 or more people by zerging it down before the "enrage" hit. I certainly felt proud that we beat it with 25 (and, in fact, before even gearing in SST we had beat it slightly after 1 enrage time hit). That, to me, was an accomplishment above someone zerging it with 70 people before an enrage hits.

Obviously, a big problem with our disagreement is that you ignore the fact that class diversity and fundamental game mechanics coincided with the move from 40 to 25 mans and simply attribute some things which are really not related to size to size. I will concede, on the other hand, that I tend to ignore that size is not necessarily related to difficulty, but, rather, encounter design has gotten more complex and interesting (and, dare I say, difficult) when considering, say, Molten Core encounters compared to Gruul's Lair or SSC.

[Lanludar]

Originally Posted by Miele

Wouldn't a feature such as free respecs coupled with gear more hybrid oriented be a possible solution?

Let's say I'm a shaman and I spam chain heal, but my gear has an equal amount of damage and healing, with a couple pieces to eventually swap for +hit or +crit (not an entire set of course) when appropriate (more a matter of min-maxing), thus at the cost of an astral recall and a soul shard I could be switching to damage in a few minutes. The same would be true for all classes that can cover 2 or even 3 different roles.

This would of course require a total rework of the item creation system, in order to give away cost-free stats, but allow more raid customization on the fly.

I still think a job system is better, but you'd still need two-three sets of gear. Free respecs would be a sort of job system, in a way. Meh, maybe it's undoable.

What exactly do rogues get to do in your new system?

[Vorph]

The same thing they do now; top the dps meters without ever needing to respec?

[Suineg]

How your guild did such and such encounter lends no weight to your argument. In fact it strengthens the opposition.

Having a "large" raid compared to a medium 25 man gives you more options to be creative. It's simple math. The more people you have the more diverse you can be.

Changing the entire game into a job system or bringing up the frequent (I wish I had free respecs) and such... At this point completely restructuring the game would kill WoW. (for those that doubt it see SWG)

Raid bench is a poorly thought of idea that basically got shot down and now the thread has degenerated and I know it will go even further down into a never ending spiral of "what if WoW did what this other MMO did".

[Vorph]

Yes, the original idea that started this post was silly, and WoW certainly isn't going to get a job system this late in the game no matter how much of an improvement it would be over what we have now. However, I don't see how making a version of the hunter pet stable, except for talent specs, would be anything remotely approaching a change of SWG/NGE proportions. It seems like the no-brainer sort of thing that should have been put in a year and a half ago.

And personally, I think 40 man stuff sucked ass. 25 is a much better number.

[James]

Originally Posted by Seryne

Obviously, a big problem with our disagreement is that you ignore the fact that class diversity and fundamental game mechanics coincided with the move from 40 to 25 mans and simply attribute some things which are really not related to size to size.

No, I'm not ignoring that, I'm simply not including it in the reasons for why 40 man > 25 man. Class and spec diversity is great, I don't think you'll find me stating otherwise anywhere.

Every raid up until Naxx was 'easier' because it was designed that way, not because of raid size. You carrying 15 retards has nothing to do with the overall difficulty of the raid game, since carrying retards is and always will be what the raid game is about. Every guild has 'those people' that just aren't up to par, and trying to say that cutting the raid down to 25 people somehow makes them disappear is a fallacy at best.

And certainly while I can appreciate the ball-boasting of taking less people to do more, it doesn't really apply to the raid size cap that we're talking about. Great, you took 25 people to kill something that everyone else does with 70 -- this is a unique situation that simply doesn't apply to the raid cap where encounters are designed with a set number of players. Likewise, taking 10 people to kill Onyxia/Gruul is a similar situation, but you wouldn't build a 10 man guild to raid 25 man content because it's just not feasible. So when everyone has a 25 man raid, who is boasting that they are killing mobs with less than 40?

Managing 25 people is certainly easier than managing 40

Is it? Is it really? I'd love to get a poll of guild leaders/officers who had extensive experience pre- and post-BC that could pick easier, harder, or nearly the same. The overall management of systems is nearly identical across raid sizes, the difficulty in it comes from creating them, implementing them, and then keeping them up to date as required. The more people added into that system simply lessens individual accountability, it does NOT inherently increase management difficulty. The one true difficulty of raid/guild management, cliques, is just as rampant in a 25 man raid as it is in a 40 man raid, and equally damaging if not mitigated. More people does not mean less social cohesion, more people simply means more people.


The bottom line is that the reduction in raid size is supposed to make forming and managing a guild easier. The reality is it doesn't. The difficulties in creating a guild of like minded people are just as present today as they were in the 40 man days, and I would submit that giving up the avenues of development that the extra 15 people in a raid nets you is not worth the reduction in size at all.

[needraRZ]

What about someone writing an addon that allows guild members to stay in the raid (but not actually zone in), and see some sort of GFX display of whats going on?

At the minimum a way of tracking mobs hps, combined with boss mod type warning and vent/TS would allow those waiting for a spot to open to follow the action.

[Twobit Whore]

You can just whisper someone using DBM and get the status of a raid. Time of fight, health of mob, number of people alive.

[James]

Originally Posted by needraRZ

What about someone writing an addon that allows guild members to stay in the raid (but not actually zone in), and see some sort of GFX display of whats going on?

At the minimum a way of tracking mobs hps, combined with boss mod type warning and vent/TS would allow those waiting for a spot to open to follow the action.

Come on. People have difficulty paying attention when actually IN the fucking raid. No one wants to be the sit out and be required to sit around with dick in hand to boot.

[Zehn - Vhex]

I think far too many of you are the retards that were being carried along and then got sat once TBC hit and are now bitter about it.

Only explanation for some of these terrible idea's. If you're not in the raid, who honestly gives a fuck? Go farm some herbs or something.