Can we just have the Wrath of the Lich King Raiding Scheme?

[ZohnoReecho]

The problem with dumbing down content is that it will make lazy people even lazier.
The problem with PUGs is not "I'm skilled and they aren't"… no, they are lazy and wanna be dragged to the next raid.

You can already see it in things like AK boss. That fight is so dumbed down due to the equip out there that people don't even try anymore to avoid the room wide AOE. And that is what would happen with an easier T5. People would eat divebombs like gummy bears; if conflagration didn't kill the party member but just bring it down to 5% of his HP, the rest of the party would just hit Twintania like a sand bag, the healer would just heal the guy when conflagration is gone.

Making the fights easier wouldn't allow people to practice more or get more skills, but would allow even more people to scrap their asses watching TV while the rest of party would have to drag them to the win.

If you have the skill, make a party finder, maybe a learning one, and keep in touch with people you consider as much skilled as you are so that you can start the next party finder with more people until you find a good group to win it.

If you don't wanna communicate, socialize, work(play; just to avoid "this isn't a job!!!") toward an objective… well… why are you here?

[Magis]

My most recent MMO, Dungeon Fighter Online for example, end game focused on difficult content while also limiting the amount of times party members could resurrect. If you had newcomers in that kind of situation, usually it was a incredibly difficult to solo any of those fights. So the game had 4 different difficulties as a norm for all of the in-game dungeons anyway, Normal -> Expert -> Master -> Kings. Different gear also dropped on each level.

I wouldn't object to different difficulties giving out different gear, however it seems SE only wants to release one set every major patch.

What they did was if you ran the dungeon on Normal, you were allowed to ressurect infinitely, free of charge. The difference between the levels was simply mobs hitting harder, and more HP, all the mechanics still intact. This one act immensely boosted the amount of players on the high end who participated on the Kings Road level.

The difference between that MMO and this one is, le gasp, we don't really have anything that can be called a practice mode, not even a decent stepping stone until you reach T5, and by then its not even a stepping stone its a 2-story building climb.

You are allowed to resurrect infinitely in this game to though too? Heck, it's not like WoW where you had to do a long ghost walk all the way back or XI which would throw you to your home point (iirc, it may have been different for BCNMs can't recall).

People can practice in T5 itself, especially now with echo and basically free i100 gear.

T5? No AoE markers whatsoever. Not even warnings for something like the Lava Plumes which are shot out instantly and randomly.

Introduced your true first tank one shot mechanic, (unless you count Mountain Buster from Titan HM), Death sentence. The damage difference between the two is quite large.

Show me the instance that shows you even something remotely similar, to Conflaguration + Fireballs, or how to handle them.

Divebombs? You can see it in ST for the first time now, however they don't even function fundamentally the same and ones LARGELY more unforgiving then the other. (I've also yet to see someone marked with a Divebomb in ST get to dodge it.)

Aetheric Profusion + Neurolink - No instance has something similar up till now, unless you count something like Garuda EX and Spiny, and guess what you can do coil without touching EX primals.

Dreadknights + Twisters, again, two one shot mechanics going off at the same time, not to mention Death Sentence. No other instance up till now has this many deadly mechanics at once.

The difficulty jump from T1-T4 to T5 is way higher then many vets seem to think nowadays. However, its demonstrated by the masses in DF or hell even PF on most servers. It's not the whole first coil, its T5 largely that is the stepping stone for T6-T9 and that difficulty increase between the two, actually makes sense.

Markers targeting a player were used in previous dungeons, ie: Chimera and Anantaboga (AK's last boss), though they appear as crosshairs iirc. It taught that you could be responsible for doing an action YOURSELF, and have to keep an eye on your current status. The plumes themselves are markers though, it requires the player to pay attention and get out asap.

I don't see how Aetheric Profusion is difficult to do... stand in the neurolink... done.

Hatch is based off of Chimera's and Anantaboga's "ball coming toward you" mechanic again (even gives you a marker!), but instead of just running from the party, you must stand in the neurolink.

Dreadknights are just DPS checks with a instant KO punishment, which trials are full of. Twisters is the only "new" mechanic not seen in previous dungeons (I think), but it isn't a difficult one to learn. It just takes paying attention to the cast bar.

While the moves put interesting twists, most are still based on something a player has seen before. Most of them can be boiled down to "something appears, be it marker, plume, or cast bar... move.

To get other gear from it? What else? Plenty of T5 vets run the dungeon continuously to bring there characters up to speed with pre-SCOB BIS. These are the people I'm largely talking about that were so against echo appearing in coil because they felt it made the content too easy and yet when they run it again for their alts, they don't remove the echo because they want a challenge.

People will take the easiest route regardless, especially if it was already cleared. Also a lot of the reasons for the above complaints is it goes around the point of T5 -> T6... it's an attunement (ignoring people circumventing that, payed runs and all). It basically is a mark that if you can complete T5, you should be able to attempt and clear T6. Especially because T6's main shtick is basically twisters in reverse. It throws an enemy at you as a distraction (T5 was dreadknight, T6 is hornet), and then sneaks in a cast bar that will instant KO you if you move (or as in T5, don't move). I've seen people who can't do the most basic mechanics of T6 joining clear parties and it ruins everyone's day.

It's not to demean your comment but your situation is nowhere near defining for other servers. Saying your on a high pop server such as Excalibur or Gilgamesh for examples then imagining this is the norm on many other servers is disenfranchised. Many servers suffer from even PF not being any different from DF.

Perhaps you took my comment a bit more personal then needed. It's mainly targetting those that continuously say such and such isn't needed when it is in fact needed. Perhaps the white cloak over your eyes is a result of your playing on Excalibur, but the situation is better reflected in say, Duty Finder. Go single queue in Duty Finder, I can guarentee you, 90+% of the time you will not come close to a win.

The problem is much more deeper rooted in my opinion. It's not the difficulty scaling, it's the battle system itself. Notice I never once mentioned above about what jobs have to do. You are not using your knowledge and skill of your job... you are memorizing a step dance (or as some people say... jump rope) that a certain boss does. Failing this step dance, you most likely wipe the group. There is no way a player can come into a raid, and win it on their skill of their job alone. The battle system isn't sufficiently complex enough to have the player's job be the main focus, so that has to be put on making more complex boss mechanics. This is also why Youtube is so rampant, because until you see what the boss will do, it will most likely instant KO you. However I digress, that's a different topic in itself.

[Fendred]

The problem with dumbing down content is that it will make lazy people even lazier.
The problem with PUGs is not "I'm skilled and they aren't"… no, they are lazy and wanna be dragged to the next raid.

You can already see it in things like AK boss. That fight is so dumbed down due to the equip out there that people don't even try anymore to avoid the room wide AOE...

Ah yes, the vertical progression dilemma. It is a problem many people have brought up before which can only be solved by stopping ilvl surge (or expanding level sync to ilvl sync, which would certainly make a lot of players wanting to see the effect of their high end gear unhappy). However, the issue here has more to do with finding a way to turn new players into raiders. As I've stated in a previous post, back in WoW's hey day, there would be people advertising for new static raid teams every other hour. That is because by the time people had reached end game they were very comfortable with working in teams and as such created an environment where people joined parties just to enjoy others company. Not only that, but this continued far beyond release as new waves of players complete the journey to end game. Fast forward about ten years later to ffxiv:arr: The chat logs are dead and party finder is dominated with "win" groups discouraging new players from doing the content.

Creating conditions to nurture and reward positive player-to-player interaction is the top priority of any MMORPG end game. On top of which, the ever rising ilvl means that previous content cannot be used as part of that ladder due to its increasing irrelevance to progression. The group must have a reason to form, reasons to socialize in order to build healthy working relationships, and then reasons to discuss strategy that involves possible alternatives.

[ZohnoReecho]

Ah yes, the vertical progression dilemma. It is a problem many people have brought up before which can only be solved by stopping ilvl surge (or expanding level sync to ilvl sync, which would certainly make a lot of players wanting to see the effect of their high end gear unhappy). However, the issue here has more to do with finding a way to turn new players into raiders. As I've stated in a previous post, back in WoW's hey day, there would be people advertising for new static raid teams every other hour. That is because by the time people had reached end game they were very comfortable with working in teams and as such created an environment where people joined parties just to enjoy others company. Not only that, but this continued far beyond release as new waves of players complete the journey to end game. Fast forward about ten years later to ffxiv:arr: The chat logs are dead and party finder is dominated with "win" groups discouraging new players from doing the content.

Creating conditions to nurture and reward positive player-to-player interaction is the top priority of any MMORPG end game. On top of which, the ever rising ilvl means that previous content cannot be used as part of that ladder due to its increasing irrelevance to progression. The group must have a reason to form, reasons to socialize in order to build healthy working relationships, and then reasons to discuss strategy that involves possible alternatives.

My AK example was not about iLv but more about how much you can dumb down something. What is an easier fight? A fight where you don't die? Or don't die too much? Where the only big moves remove 20% of your HP at best?
Maybe a fight where you just have to memorize 2 or 3 boss moves and half of them can be ignored since the damage is so low?

Yoshida is growing the community too fast? The people here don't wanna spend time learning something and you say the game is too fast?
People are too tired to even chew what they eat before gobbling it. No wonder the gaming community is going down the drain.
People want things so quickly that the amount of stuff that gotta be produced gotta be a lot and of shitty quality as a consequence.

You want a more complex combat system? Imagine a complex combat system to control while people gotta move out of plumes! You wanna blow their minds? As if adding skillchains would make people win more fights…

This is a game that requires memorization, cooperation, coordination and even socialization.
If you wanna go on with the fights learn those things or there is Habbo out there.

[raelgun]

Really loved WOTLK, beating algalon, YOGG 1 light, didnt get the chance to do YOGG 0, but man was mimiron firefighter an absolute hurdle, WOTLK did a lot of things right for PVE.
Yet even the normal mode there was tuned nicely, Im in complete support to have 3 tiers of raiding, coil only has 4 bosses each so far, can easily add 3 tiers for this, blizzard manages just fine with 2 and now 3 tiers of difficulty with 12 plus bosses per tier.
If people realise that having a easy mode to existing raids, then nerfs can be left alone in the normal mode and hard mode tiers and the gear that drops from them, this also gives more players stuff to do, Ive played at a high level in wow and stuff that the lower end of the spectrum of players in what they did had no impact in my playing experience.
LFR was designed for people to see the dungeon, if people wanted to raid seriously, there was plenty of guilds to apply to and with varied application requirements, there was something suited to everyone and each raid team were of equivalent to each other, mind you, WOW also has a lot of tools to address issues that occur, with damage, with tactics, many many things.

WOTLK has loads of things to do for every player, and various skill levels, even for VOA, people seem to not realise, theres even a 'hard mode' mode for that which gives you a achievement for bragging rights and actually was bit of a pain to do. The new expansion coming out has 3 difficulties tiers, 2 of which have flexible raid sizes which the encounters scales depending how many people you bring, more stuff to do and its by choice if you want to do it.

I really couldnt care if lower skilled players do easy mode, I wont be personally raiding with them since my group is doing alright in 2nd coil, but I wont deny them content in such sense for a easier mode, this is what WOTLK did right, gave everyone something to do.

Also thanks to having a easier mode, blizzard no longer applies a echo style nerf to raids anymore, they did that with LK raid and dragonsoul, really bad design but they stopped that by actually now giving more varied diff settings, blizzard havent really nerfed the raids in mists much.

Also as a byproduct of this, as horrible as this may sound, if you give the lower end skill set players something to do like this, it will mean a few things, one of which, theres a reduced amount of players asking of those have cleared stuff to assist them, in some cases begging and manipulation etc..., also the design context can be so that, SE doesnt have to try have design elements where they try to hide peoples mistakes or lack of skill i.e dps and rely on those higher skilled to boost them through or carry.
People can just focus on what they are doing, and less on where others are at this point, theres such a war between the skilled players and lesser skilled ones on these forums due to the single piece of content they want to do, and how some players think the higher end skilled players to help or carry players through, give them something to do themselves, they will at least start there.

[maxthunder1]

This isn't a raiding game.

Ya you are right its, my little ponies on steroids or power puff girls go to hollywood take your pick.

[cryptic_angel]

Really loved WOTLK, beating algalon, YOGG 1 light, didnt get the chance to do YOGG 0, but man was mimiron firefighter an absolute hurdle, WOTLK did a lot of things right for PVE.
Yet even the normal modethere was tuned nicely, Im in complete support to have 3 tiers of raiding, coil only has 4 bosses each so far, can easily add 3 tiers for this, blizzard manages just fine with 2 and now 3 tiers of difficulty with 12 plus bosses per tier.
If people realise that having a easy mode to existing raids, then nerfs can be left alone in the normal mode and hard mode tiers and the gear that drops from them, this also gives more players stuff to do, Ive played at a high level in wow and stuff that the lower end of the spectrum of players in what they did had no impact in my playing experience.
LFR was designed for people to see the dungeon, if people wanted to raid seriously, there was plenty of guilds to apply to and with varied application requirements, there was something suited to everyone and each raid team were of equivalent to each other, mind you, WOW also has a lot of tools to address issues that occur, with damage, with tactics, many many things.

Having an easy mode would further invalidate raid rewards. In the WotLK model, there was no issues with the easier 10-man raids because the gear was always inferior.

Gear is not a reward in this game. You can get ilvl 109 without ever stepping into a single raid. Other than the HA weapon, raiders don't get superior gear for their efforts. At best raid gear serves as side grades. Only if you are lucky and blessed by the RNG gods, you might get BiS and your HA weapon from coil.

There would be very little reason to raid the "25man" coil difficulty when you could just do easy coil and then wait for your free ilvl110 gear in 2-3 months.

WOTLK has loads of things to do for every player, and various skill levels, even for VOA, people seem to not realise, theres even a 'hard mode' mode for that which gives you a achievement for bragging rights and actually was bit of a pain to do. The new expansion coming out has 3 difficulties tiers, 2 of which have flexible raid sizes which the encounters scales depending how many people you bring, more stuff to do and its by choice if you want to do it.

90% of the content in this game is already designed for casual players. How much more content do they really need?

I mentioned it won't impact you, or the cutting edge of raiders. You will continue to raid at the top tier of content as it comes out regardless of how others play. If something like this was to be added and gives players a way to developt the toolset needed to reach higher end raiding, the only impact it would have on players like yourself is a larger pool of skilled people to draw on.

There exists ST and EX primals to develope those toolkits. We don't need to dumb down the only difficult content in the game so players who can't cut it can have everything handed to them

Non-raiding players get raid gear without raiding.
Non-raiding players got ST, hunts, and new dungeons in the last patch. How much more content do they need?
Non-raiding players already enjoy most of the dev teams attention. Why don't we leave coil alone?

[raelgun]

with regards to gear, doesnt bother me really, I was playing for progression, not to mention Ive had WOL rankings, my reward was bragging rights against other good players, couldnt give a damn about random players on the server walking past me, in my experience, all the raiding guilds that were progression base were doing raids to progress, they couldnt give a damn about what gear you had, and expected you to treat gear as a tool, not a reward as you are treating it.

With regards to if the random player didnt want to step into say the harder mode, well that doesnt effect me as I would actively seek to be in a '25 man coil', players do different things, the ones that dont want to raid progressively wont do it anyways, it wont change how they are approaching the game to start with and are happy with easy mode, they prob wont step into normal mode at all regardless, my advice is, just focus on what you want to do and who with.

Also if you get to keep the harder mode raiding, how is that taken away if theres an added easier mode ?, it really doesnt effect you, its not effected me in WOW raiding at all unless they did a blanket nerf, which a easy mode will avoid this in normal mode. Blanket nerfs etc.. is something you need to consider more about, let me and your self keep the current raids the way they are, though a lot of content is for those who dont raid much, the last thing you want, is the content you do directly taken away from you, blanket nerfs do this and I dont want that.

[cryptic_angel]

with regards to gear, doesnt bother me really, I was playing for progression, not to mention Ive had WOL rankings, my reward was bragging rights against other good players, couldnt give a damn about random players on the server walking past me, in my experience, all the raiding guilds that were progression base were doing raids to progress, they couldnt give a damn about what gear you had, and expected you to treat gear as a tool, not a reward as you are treating it.

Progression is great. Progression does not keep you coming back for four months after you downed t9. Gear keeps you coming back. All raiders care about gear or they would just get their t9 kill and unsub til the next raid patch.

[raelgun]

Gotta ask you this, in the current state of things, how does that change things the way they are now ? What you just described still exists now the same way it will if a easier mode will be added, again, it doesnt change things.
People do different things, if people want to keep coming back for gear, let them, dont get me wrong, Ive done farm runs, but gear is still treated as a tool, half the cases, we even try do things very differently or see if a entirely diff strat will work, people and groups vary, just like you and me, I do raids for the sake of progression, you may value gear more.

Not to mention theres still stuff in the game to do, some may only log into raid, but whats wrong with that ?, to me in raiding, as long as we do it well in raids since its scheduled runs, why should their log ins at other times bother me ? How does them for example not logging in effect me in rated battle grounds or arenas for example ?

Trust me when I say, those who are lesser skilled would love a easy mode, and will do that, and most likely will never touch the harder modes, even with no easy modes, there are some who are just not keen to do them, they can get gear thats a lower item level and most likely be fine with it, at least the content you do remains intact.

Also come to think of it, I dont think once in WOW Ive ever had full BIS or max item level in each tier in relevant content, and thats never bothered me in the slightest.

Also very importantly to your points, in mists, the current flex mode is easy mode, and in SoO, normal mode and heroic modes have barely received nerfs thanks to the easy mode, the content we do have remained largely intact, isnt that what you want ?