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World of Warcraft: Flexible Raids to Cater to Smaller Groups
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
World of Warcraft's site has been updated with a new developer post to introduce players to a new feature coming in the forthcoming v5.4 update. Called 'flexible raids', the feature will allow smaller groups of players to participate in raids. In particular, Blizzard is targeting social groups (friends & family) and smaller guilds.
The Flexible Raid system is designed so that the challenge level will scale depending on how many players you have in the Raid. So if you switch between 14 players one week and 22 the next, the difficulty will adjust automatically. Keep in mind that unlike Raid Finder, no matchmaking is available, so you’ll need to make sure you invite people to attend—but if some can’t make it, it’s not the end of the world (or the Raid). You’ll also still be able to invite Real ID or Battle.net friends cross-realm. Who you choose to bring and what Item Level gear they’ll need to join your merry band is up to you, too—there’s no Item Level requirement for this Raid difficulty.
Read more on the World of Warcraft site.
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casual ... no one cares ...
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(Psst, Blizz, was suggested in 2004...)
Anyway, be interesting to see how they plan to work it with set drop tables. Or do they intend to finally pitch those? And..they do.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
That actually sounds pretty good.
Actually, that's where the money is.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Dynamically scaling content difficulty is something that's been needed in MMO's for a long time. This has nothing to do with casual, it's a mechanic that should have been realized ages ago.
The problem is that everyone has this bizarre arbitrary line in their mind of what constitutes casual and hardcore. 5 people, that's casual? 10? Casual. 15? Casual? 20? Hmm, mostly casual. 40? Hardcore! 100? Super hardcore!
But 40 person content might be someone else's idea of casual. And to some people (let's call them PvPers) 100% of PvE content is considered casual. So a 1000 person raid is still casual because it's killing a scripted dragon.
Kinda funny how those words lose a lot of meaning when you look at them through different lenses.
In any case, regardless of what game is doing this, scaling difficulty should have always been a thing.
They must be looking to wring every red cent they can get out of this game. What's next solo raids?
edit
After thinking a little bit more about this I guess it makes sense what with them shit canning Titan to start over they're going to need the funds. I guess when they announce solo raids I may try this again /rollseyes
Too late. If this had been implemented at the outset of Pandaria it might have made more of a difference, as it certainly would have saved my guild. We lost people at the beginning with folks simply not returning, and my faction on my server was very quiet due to the major raiding guilds moving away. So, we didn't have enough raiders, and couldn't really recruit the people we needed.
While this isn't a horrible idea, it should have been implemented when LFR was and it would have made more of a difference to many guilds.
I expected it to fill the "not enough to go 25s, but too many to go 10s segment". Instead, it seems to be a gloryfied LFR with friends.
I'm eager to see how they'll work out scaling and whether it'll depend on role distributions or just on the amount of players in your raid.
Making content easier and more accessible has not worked out well for WoW in terms of player retention.
Ever since Blizz shifted to this mindset of giving everyone a taste of the high-end content, the sub numbers have been moving in the wrong direction.
Because that is EXACTLY what they are doing, not addressing a problem that is seen a lot by people actually playing the game. And I am curious if you would have posted this nonsense if this was being done in any other game...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
That's why they are hurting for players.
So by limiting the content in the game by just allowing the "hardcore, hey I put my time in" gamers, THAT would have kept the sub numbers where they were?
I play the game quite a bit but do not consider myself a "hardcore" gamer anymore. Real life has a way of doing that but I have put in my time since beta. So by your reasoning I shouldn't be allowed access to content because of that. You tell me how that keeps Blizzard from losing my money. Also, Blizzard gets my money, why should I not get access to everything I am paying for?
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Considering that WoW has lost about 4 million subs since the end of WotLK, arguably the time that Blizz really started nerfing raid difficulty to appease players, I stand by my statement.
WoW was at it's peak in terms of popularity when not everyone could do raids and when earning an epic piece of gear actually meant something.
As soon as the entitlement mentality (which you clearly feel as stated in your post) started to become prevalent and Blizz started catering to it, sub numbers began dropping signifcantly. It's not me wanting to prevent you from seeing content, it's a simple fact in the timeline of WoW.
I see sarcasm easily escapes you, but since you asked. If this were any other game that I had spent thousands of hours playing and then been driven from, yes I would post something similar.
I'm glad you have the inside knowledge from Blizzard to be able to confirm nonsense on these forums.
The numbers also dropped because there are just more options to choose from. Granted when WoW came out it wasn't the only kid on the block but the neighbourhood has grown and people moved around a lot more than they could have 9 years ago.
I don't believe it to be just the casual vs hardcore.
It's not the size of the group that is the issue... it's the fact that there is a raid lock out. They've essentially added 3 more copies of the same raid for people to do each week... when all they really wanted was a no-lockout system.
*If* end game is where it is at, shouldn't players be able to *end game* 24/7? WotLK is the closest thing to a no lockout system, and damn if it wasn't extremely popular and alt-o-holic friendly. They didn't need something somewhere between 10 and 25 to make players happy and the content was already stupified to the extent that anyone could do it.
"Hey, let's make 3 new modes of the same dungeons and call it flex. They'll get lesser gear than what they are already getting, but hey, no one cares about the gear, they just love the raids so much that they'll do endless flavors of the same thing! We've got 8 months to burn and little to give them. This is pure gold!"
I agree with you Bill. I talked about this in Rift, SWTOR and other MMOS I played plus WOW. However it was always shot down because the hardcore raider community thinks that if you dont have X amount of players you have no right to raid. Problem is raiding overall has been dieing and seeing a new path opening up in raiding will get people back raiding when they can vs LFR or not getting into a core raid group in a guild.
I personally hope FFXIV adds this in because my WoW days are done no plans to go back. I think other MMOs need to look at scaling content vs set numbers.
MMOs are not single player games period. What Scalable raids do is simple. If you have 12 people on for a 10 man raid you leave 2 people out in the wind. With scalable raids you can now take as many people as you have online for the raid with a min and max number. This is good for the normal MMO gamer.
There is no proof made that the harmful events are caused by the first event.
Of course, a subscription decline can also be attributed to several dozen other possible factors, or combination of many factors, with no outstanding evidence that any single one of them "caused" the decline.
It's a pretty safe argument, if you ignore that all virtually all veteran games begin declining beyond (some point X), regardless of developer efforts, regardless of further expansions, and regardless of "classic" reboots.
Complex questions, simple answers.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.