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

[skaterger]

It's a priority that no one thinks about, but is always there. Why don't they play with the spell effects always turned off then? Because they'd never get to see any of them if they did that.

Hmm I know many players who do, either because their pc can't handle it or they just want to be able to see things around them more clearly .

Also, how does putting a focus bar impact your ability to enjoy the graphics of the game? On the contrary, I would argue that having all these addons, flashing signs and irritating alarm sounds would greatly decrease my ability to enjoy the fight the way its meant to be experienced. One of the most important aspects of raid awareness is good UI, by having a minimalist approach to reduce clutter, and what better way than to not install addons which tend to fill up half your screen?

Anyway, my point wasn't to attack you or your thinking, it's just that if I were to interview someone who applied to join my raid and they said "graphics" as a priority, err I just haven't met that before.

[Exstal]

If you do it that way, that means to obtain new gear past i100, every player would need to do normal coil at least, which would not be fair by forcing everyone to raid. I think they need to keep the tomestone/CT/ST route which awards i105 gear, normal raid @ 110 and savage raid @ 115. Then the subsequent normal raid would be tuned for players at i105 to cater for new raiders/normal coil raiders while making it easier for i115 raiders, which would be fine since their ultimate goal is savage mode.

Oh, I didn't think of that. Maybe just keep the next tome gear as i100 but have higher stats. Since I believe item level is only used to indicate ability to enter a particular instance, I believe they could make that number whatever they wanted it and would work it. The issue is they are increasing item level too fast and they will run into the same problem WoW had, so they should slow the item level increase now while they can rather than have to do it retroactively.

However this does give rise to gear inflation and honestly, I would like to see a mix of horizontal progression and vertical progression. I think a possible alternative to having a higher ilvl for savage coil would be to give gear that drops from savage 1-2 materia slots, and making the materias much more interesting than the bland ones we have currently.

I think this could work if it's always guaranteed 2-slot materia rather than possible 1, 3, or none. Then you don't increase item level at all but savage gear will be superior to non-savage. Good idea, I like it!

[Fendred]

That's a pretty good strawman argument you got there. Anyway, I added a second part to my post which I clarified a few things, you might want to read that.

changed my post while you were quoting me to something I thought was a bit more accurate.

No that is not what I was saying. I even said I agreed with you. My point is that there are a lot of more interesting things made to hold a player's attention than the bloody cast bar... like the boss itself.

[Amberion]

The thing is, though, what you might be looking at as stagnation might actually just be the hypothetical limit of the player base. The game was so popular that literally everyone had heard of it. They might be the only game in history to have come close to really getting every possible player that would ever be interested in playing the game within the regions of its release.

Maybe. But I think that it's unlikely to be the case. The game had a steady increase up until WoTLK. If they had hit or nearly hit the limit, I think the increase would have been a lot slower before subs stagnated.

Decline would have been a better word than stagnation. So yes, it stagnated during a good part of Wrath and peaked at 12 Millions. I still have no ideas where you're getting your data about them losing their subs 2 months in.

users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

And I only said they lost those extras that joined for WoTLK.

[skaterger]

changed my post while you were quoting me to something I thought was a bit more accurate.

No that is not what I was saying. I even said I agreed with you. My point is that there are a lot of more interesting things made to hold a player's attention than the bloody cast bar... like the boss itself.

Yeah so would having "BOSS LALAFELL IS CASTING IPWNYOU SKILL FOR 1000000 DAMAGE. MOVE NOW!!!!" in big flashing bold letters and a corresponding alarm sound be in any way less distracting than watching the cast bar?

[Noel_Clover]

Fast thread is fast, I totally missed the part where you cherry picked my posts. Wonderful.

While I do feel that your tone is rather aggressive and am feeling relatively miffed at your posts, I'll assume that it's done with a neutral tone, as is this post.

I disagree with your post because Coil is easy. It's mechanically easy, you kill your target, you accomplish your objectives, done. Asking for the bar to be lowered is where I disagree with you because it promotes and permits people being weak and terrible. Now, I don't say it with scorn, but rather pity unless said players intentionally play badly because they're really bad. But players, having been guided by dungeons AND hests from 1 to 50 should know the basic ropes required to get through a raid like Coil.

While I'm all for letting players experience all the content in a game, especially since they pay for it, I believe that content designed for players who have reached the end of their class which they should have mastered to an acceptable degree, should be kept. Coil does that and it does it beautifully. I do agree that CT/ST is easy though, but they have said that they won't make 24 man hard. Probably due to all the chaos that comes from having potentially 23 people who don't know their job/roles with you and all.

Like seriously, I've ran a lotta dungeons with people telling me that they're 50 and geared so they know their stuff but can't perform.

So at the end of it, I suppose I'm saying that players just need to get good.

On your second post quoting me on add-ons and coddling players... They do. Making something significantly easier because a player can't cope with looking at a cast bar is really coddling a player. I view it as such because it stops encouraging, not necessarily discouraging, people from getting better. Bad teams wiping even with the use of add-ons that told them "Oh look, fire on the ground, run!" simply makes them even more terrible players.

Also, people made mods to help the community. It wasn't such a burden on players as you so put it. Some players didn't learn, some were slow, not everyone was up to what was a challenge. A difficult challenge, if we consider WoW Vanilla where Paladins were wearing skirts and healing, but a challenge, not a burden. Course, again, like I said much earlier, difficulty is a matter of perception and understanding.

Take for example Dark Souls and Demon's Souls. Games considered terribly difficult and controller smashing worthy for some. I played it, died a little, figured it out in an hour and started cleaning up demons for their souls left and right. Was it laughably easy to me? Yes. To my friend who threw his controller out the window... not so much. But that doesn't change the fact that it's simple once you understand, and with understanding and practice one gets better.

The end-game raid in this game is the same. All the community, as a whole, needs is learning, understanding and practice. Lowering the bar would circumvent the need for this and make things teh lolz.

My bad Fendred, I could've sworn I read you typing out that they're still gaining subs sans the Wrath part. So my bad on that. /bow

Now that that's done and over with, I'm glad you're not asking for add-ons, though here's another question: How much clearer do you want cues to be?

Major Note: While I post it as Coil, I refer to end-game raiding. I use Coil because it's the current end-game raiding level and you find it to be the equivalent of a Wrath hard mode dungeon.

[Zarzak]

Normal modes were nothing like Crystal Tower in terms of ease. They posed a significant challenge to players, but the way they were tuned required less time wasted wiping than what the current Coil difficulty is set at, which is more akin to hard mode.

You had me with these 2 difficulty modes until this.

If normal coil is considered "Hard mode" by WoW. No thank you.

[Zarzak]

I would argue that having all these addons, flashing signs and irritating alarm sounds would greatly decrease my ability to enjoy the fight the way its meant to be experienced.

That is one thing I HATED HATED HATED about Rift. Which they apparently got from WoW. The "You must have this addon that does everything but moves your character for you to raid!"

I do not need an addon that screams at me in 10 different languages to "RUN IN CIRCLES!!!!!!" when I have a debuff that does damage if I'm not moving. I can handle that myself.

[Nel_Celestine]

For everyone saying that coil is easy, I do have one serious question. Firstly, no this isn't me being aggressive in this point, it is a geniune question.

If coil is as easy as many seem to say it is, why aren't more of the player base getting though it? In this thread alone I've seen posts where it can be learned in 1~2 hours and that it's just dodging. But if that's the case, why is the majority of the player base not though second or even first coil? Even then, why is considering something challenging but not as hard as coil that other players can participate in such a bad idea?

I've seen topics of people asking for harder dungeons, which is a good idea and lead in for stuff such as coil if run at the proper item level for said dungeon. If there was say a 3 tiered level of Third Coil of Bahamut, Normal (drops i120) Hard (drops i125) and Savage (drops i130) would that really be a detriment to the community as a whole? Those in the upper tier of raiding would be doing hard and savage in order to have the best gear out there, those not in the top tier can do normal while getting some gear and experience before trying hard then eventually savage.

It could expand the pool to draw from for people who PUG, it can bring people with more experience than bold face lying when picking up someone to fill in for a static member.

The only negative I can see on this issue would be increased development time and not even that much over all. With this system they wouldn't even HAVE to give the echo buff after six months. Will a system like this be in for 2.4? Not likely. But by discussing this from all angles (not just 'get good and stop being bad') we can help develop content for a larger player base to keep people interested without them feeling like they hit a brick wall of content.

[Havenchild]

I think content such as coil, which is quite fulfilling and challenging needs to find it's way into the mainstream better. It made sense when they allowed it to be Duty Finder'd but at that time it was so dummy downed and largely there was already a big desynch from the people wanting to do it to those that didn't care to.

I kinda favor'd a previous idea of making the raid content slightly more involved with the main story. If you had a easier version of it, co-exist with a more non-forgiving version, with perhaps no lock-out between the two and slightly better rewards for the harder version, you give big incentive for people to do the content both casual and hardcore.

Largely the fault of Sands/Oils being locked behind coil, is that to complete the content you largely require a static on most servers. Not everyone has that time though, but this is amazing content that the player base largely knows nothing about, which is a real shame.

T9 is by far the greatest fight ever made in this game and I'm sure most would agree that is an incredibly fun one. We need others to see it.