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

[Alukah]

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.

You should review the whole scenario, i110 gear was only attainable by raiders for a whole major patch until they allowed non-raiders to get upgraded soldiery, but HA is still only attainable by raiders - you still have exclusive rewards, is that not enough? Why focus so much on ilvl when not even first coil had higher ilvl gear than non-raid gear? Don't you think perhaps they always intended to mainstream soldiery gear, just like they did with myth gear, which again was same ilvl as first coil gear?

Raiding isn't only about ilvl or loot, and even then, second coil loot is still relevant, you are giving too much importance to ilvl.

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



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?

"Lower difficulty" is not equal to "everything is handed to them." - repeat that over and over until it sinks in.

Non-raiding players don't get raid gear, there's no other way to obtain High Allagan outside Second Coil.
Raiding players also got ST, hunts and new dungeons, last time I checked raiders are not excluded from that content, and hell that I see a lot of raiders hunting or in ST.
Your third point... So you want raiding to be exclusive just because you don't have enough attention? How would make raids less exclusive affect that?

And note that should they add another mid-core (not casual) mode for raids, don't you think they would change how vertical progression works? (as in, you wouldn't see something like what happened with hunts, because said gear would be added to a mid-core raid mode instead)

Actually using myth and soldiery as examples, if they went with this raiding scheme from the beginning they could have implemented myth gear as "normal coil" rewards and allagan as "hard coil" rewards, keeping darklight as the "currency gear", then for 2.2 soldiery gear would be the "currency gear", normal second coil would be upgraded soldiery and hard coil would be high allagan.

the +5 ilvl weapon would still be locked behind hard coil, having BiS gear would be exclusive for hard coil players and everyone has something to work towards, unlike now that there's only either casual or hard content, not mid content.

[Krr]

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?

Gear? Gear isn't content. Gear isn't something you play in the game. Gear is something that pushes players to do things in the game, so that content doesn't die. ST? Four encounters you're done with in a week. Gives gear no one cares about and oils you up. New dungeons? Tuned for i70 players, drops i80 gear, a group of casual player that doesn't actually exist any more. May as well not exist past the first run. Hunts? Some lazily reskinned (not even all of them!) and rescaled mobs that operate with about the same design depth as FATEs.

Meanwhile, raid content has a long lifespan due to constantly dropping relevant gear and more importantly, is intricately designed and one of the few pieces of content that hasn't used aggressively recycled assets since 2.1. You get at least three new encounters every patch to boot. It should certainly be more (why the hell aren't the raids fully fleshed out dungeons, I swear to god,) but it's still more than what you imagine all the 'non raiders' getting, which is some stuff to autoattack for a week and then log off. If they're lucky, something to autoattack for three months (hello, relics).

Besides, not everyone who raids does or desires to do so at the weekly static level.

[cryptic_angel]

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 differentthings, 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.

Well, since WotlK is the example used in this thread, I will draw from that.

In 10-man IC, the easy raid shared the story with the harder 25-man IC raid. An easy mode coil would supposedly operate under the same premise. The easy mode coil would not only share the story, but the gear look as well.

In every thread about raid rewards vs ilvl110 hunt gear, people highlight the rewards from raiding in this game. Usually the list of raid "rewards" are as follows:

BiS
Vanity of HA gear
HA weapon
Satisfaction of raid clear

Adding an easy mode coil would further undermine the raid rewards. People from the easy mode of coil will get all the looks of HA gear as well as the satisfaction of the clear. That would be fantastic for them I am sure; however, how rewarding is the story going to be in harder coil when you are likely to see it in easy coil? Raiders will raid easy coil just for the gear bump to do harder coil. You could see this similar behavior back in WotLK where people raided both 10-man and 25-man before the combined lock out. People would use the easier raid for a gear bump for the harder raid.

Adding an easy mode would make the rewards from hard mode even more trivial. The only rewards left, after the 1st clear, would be:

HA weapon
BiS

Both of which are RNG dependent. There are sooooooo many raiders with get neither BiS or HA weapons. Those raiders will have essentially cleared the SCoB over and over again for no real substantial rewards.

That would be the big difference, the harder version of SCoB would lose even more incentives to be completed. If completing something just for the sake of completing it was reward enough, brutal coil would be vastly more popular than it is.

Gear? Gear isn't content. Gear isn't something you play in the game. Gear is something that pushes players to do things in the game, so that content doesn't die. ST? Four encounters you're done with in a week. Gives gear no one cares about and oils you up. New dungeons? Tuned for i70 players, drops i80 gear, a group of casual player that doesn't actually exist any more. May as well not exist past the first run. Hunts? Some lazily reskinned (not even all of them!) and rescaled mobs that operate with about the same design depth as FATEs.

Then do raids? All the content you described is casual content aimed at casual players. A casual player plays casually for one reason or another. Why do you want a SCoB equivalent of ST? So there is another four bosses you don't care about?

Meanwhile, raid content has a long lifespan due to constantly dropping relevant gear and more importantly, is intricately designed and one of the few pieces of content that hasn't used aggressively recycled assets since 2.1. You get at least three new encounters every patch to boot. It should certainly be more (why the hell aren't the raids fully fleshed out dungeons, I swear to god,) but it's still more than what you imagine all the 'non raiders' getting, which is some stuff to autoattack for a week and then log off. If they're lucky, something to autoattack for three months (hello, relics).

Raid content has a long lifespan because of lockouts and RNG. At least half of the assents in the SCoB are recycled, so I am not sure what you are talking about when it comes to that. If players want more than "auto attacking" then they should strive to raid. There is also EX primals that players can take on as well as EX moogle. You are intentionally simplifying all the content in the game to support your argument.

Also, the SCoB fights are not well fleshed out. I don't think you have done turn 7 where you have to sit and wait for up to two minutes (holding dps 20 seconds here or there to make sure you actually have a voice to stone a renaud) at times because the fight is poorly designed.

The same thing happens in turn 6. You have to stop attacking the boss completely until the 1st honey is eaten. Otherwise, there is not enough time between the 1st honey going out and the devour that comes up after.

The same is true in turn 8. You either hold DPS or start dealing with allagan field much earlier in the fight.

Besides, not everyone who raids does or desires to do so at the weekly static level.

That's why you guys get ST. If you don't want to raid in a static, just wait for echo nerfs and go see the story in duty finder groups. You're sub fees don't guarantee the ability to see all the content. Stop acting as if this game needs to hand you everything on a silver platter.

[ZohnoReecho]

The problem is how much lower is enough?
Enough to complete the whole coil playing 4h total?

No matter how much lower they go. Someone will want to be lower and the team gotta decide when to stop.
Each additional mode they add is resources thrown away that could have been spent on other things.

Each stuff they change gotta be developed and debugged, they have no dumbification lever to make it easier. You can see the salvage mode to understand how a fight can change.

[Alukah]

snip

I really don't want to belittle your post, but your whole argument revolves around "it should remain special/exclusive" without giving any solid reason. What's the benefit of keeping raids locked to the hardcore? What's the drawback of creating a second difficulty that would not interfere with the hard mode, considering they would have different rewards? How does it help the community or the game to keep things like that?

The problem is how much lower is enough?
Enough to complete the whole coil playing 4h total?

No matter how much lower they go. Someone will want to be lower and the team gotta decide when to stop.
Each additional mode they add is resources thrown away that could have been spent on other things.

Each stuff they change gotta be developed and debugged, they have no dumbification lever to make it easier. You can see the salvage mode to understand how a fight can change.

They work with numbers, they know how many people haven't cleared second coil, they have enough data gathered from other content to know how to make an alternate fight that can be cleared by more people (not everyone, just more people) and having different difficulty levels is not something new to games.

[raelgun]

and back in WOTLK that was a very successful model, you really need to stop worrying how people see you or see others in what they have for gear, gear in the easier mode really didnt trivialise the next step, heck doing 25 normal to 25 hc at the time was still a huge step up lol, gear really didnt add much from normal mode. Those who do hard modes do it mainly cos they want the challenge and see their server rankings go up, we certainly did it for that reason.
Also, when they did combine 10 and 25 locks out in cata, during the first tier normal mode, or just after it ended, it got a huge blanket nerf, and when firelands in cata, normal mode got a huge blanket nerf as well, TOC raid essentially was the blanket nerf to ulduar as its normal mode was vastly easier, and blizz admitted they made TOC to be easier as the later half of normal mode for ulduar was deemed too hard for half the players, WOTLK did most things right, except this bit, this is what I rather they avoid doing in this game, though TOC had fun bosses, it was easier by far.

I for one want to keep hard content rolling and for it to remain intact, for it to remain intact, you need something to give to those lesser skilled, a dedicated easy mode, regardless of how you feel about gear, will keep the content me and you do intact.

[ZohnoReecho]

I really don't want to belittle your post, but your whole argument revolves around "it should remain special/exclusive" without giving any solid reason. What's the benefit of keeping raids locked to the hardcore? What's the drawback of creating a second difficulty that would not interfere with the hard mode, considering they would have different rewards? How does it help the community or the game to keep things like that?

competition, some people like it.

[Alukah]

competition, some people like it.

There's still competition, savage and hard coil modes would stay there, their challenge wouldn't be lowered, this is a separate mode that wouldn't affect any of those two.

[raelgun]

The problem is how much lower is enough?
Enough to complete the whole coil playing 4h total?

No matter how much lower they go. Someone will want to be lower and the team gotta decide when to stop.
Each additional mode they add is resources thrown away that could have been spent on other things.

By what Im used to , 4 bosses is really short, in WOW, they have 12-13 bosses, and all pretty much harder then coil, then again Ive raided with other skilled players so skill set is different. Yes youre right about how much lower, what Im thinking is basically, nothing that you can ignore basically, you still have to worry about it, but the dps requirements is a bit lower, example numbers, for said mechanic, instead of 250 in normal mode, need 200ish, its basically slightly cut down version, not faceroll.
Also things hit for a bit less, debuffs occur a bit less frequently, effects are still the same on normal mode, nothing is taken away, just they arent as severe as normal mode for example, things will still kill you, you can still wipe the raid, and as easy mode is designed for such players in mind, the dps requirements will be based around theres upon progression, of course they can step up aftewards.
If you played WOW at the mo, and tried flex, normal and hardmode, you will understand more of what I say.

And gotta be honest, tuning basically 4 bosses per tier should be nothing, if blizz can do it for 12-13 bosses, SE can damn well do it for 4 bosses, also, they should have a team dedicated to raids and dungeons and the balance that goes in them, it wont effect other parts of the game.

[Fendred]

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?

It's not an easy dungeon. It's just that people are doing the dungeon with an ilvl almost twice its requirement. Case and point, I thought they removed the flies from the wall encounter, but it turns out we're just killing it so fast they don't even spawn. Same thing happens with the glowy death balls on final boss. The boss dies so fast he doesn't even hit phase 3 to use it anymore. Therefore, it doesn't matter how interesting an encounter they make because the ilvl will rip it a new one the second ilvl hits critical mass.

On a side note, that wall encounter was supposed to teach new players to watch for cast bars, max their dps, and avoid falling to their death. How can the wall encounter accomplish that goal when new players can deck themselves out in ilvl90 equipment shortly after hitting the level cap? The vertical progression problem aids the destruction of the ladder needed to turn a new player into a competent raider, so people have difficulty dealing with the harder end game encounters. The only way to keep the ladder current in vertical progression is with multiple difficulty levels or two separate dungeons that cover the same kind of encounters in the current content.