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So It Appears Blizzard Knows Best
Spankster77
Member UncommonPosts: 487
So I have been playing Wildstar since release and I love the game. However, with the many complaints I have read here on the site and with apparent population issues on some servers, it would appear that blizzard was right in removing 40 man raids.
I for one was a fan of the 40 man raid format but most of WoWs 40 mans didn't actually require 40 players to raid. There was also a substantial amount of carrying that could be done in those 40 mans, this is where Wildstar differs (from what I have read at least). One of the biggest issues with 40 man raid content is the varying degrees of time each person has to play a game. I for one can play about 2 - 3 hours a day 4 - 5 days/week tops which means that it will take someone like me a lot longer to get attuned than someone that can play 5 + hours a day 7 days a week. This means that you may have good players that due to RL take much longer to get attuned to do the 40 mans. This creates a huge issue for people that hit 50 3 days after release and were running 20 mans the first month.
In hind site this has always been the dilemma with 40 man gated raiding. Most 40 man raids in WoW consisted of many PuGs most of which were just there filling up spots. Not to mention that a 40 man raid back in vanilla took 6 + hours in many cases by the time everyone got there, filled the empty spots, made food/consumables, etc. People accepted this because the concept was fairly new and there were limited options.
So why I do like the concept of large scale raids I do believe that Blizzard did away with 40 mans for a valid reason and I'm not sure that bringing them back is ever going to happen. WS is a great game, maybe Carbine should focus on 20 mans, which are much more manageable while still giving players a larger raid feel.
Comments
40 man raids is totally doable...
Problem is, most people don't care to raid at all... they do it because there is nothing else to do in game... which is why raid sizes are shrinking in WoW... not for a lack of bodies... a lack of interest.
Too early to say 40 man is dead... few have even gotten attuned to do them yet... until people start raiding them consistently... it's too early to say if it failed.
People always like to talk about the good old days, since they remember only the fun parts.
But once you put them back in those good old days, along with all downsides that originally came with them, they'll soon remember they weren't that perfect either.
And yeah, Blizzard knows their stuff.
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I don't know what guilds you were in, but we had a waiting list for our 40 mans... no pugs ever... you snooze you didn't get a raid invite. Hell the guild drama over being benched was epic. Epic!
If Blizzard knows best they would not make so many mistakes from the start in EVERY one of their games.The logic and end result i see from their teams is laughable,almost like they go ions with no reaction but then make split second decisions based over a couple beers or something.
The logic of removing 40 man raids again shows Blizzard doesn't have a clue.So what if some don't like it,then make content that satisfies the others like idk perhaps 24 man raid or 12 man raid or 6 man group content.There is even a more intelligent way but not like Blizzard has a clue.They could allow ANY amount of players to join in,their challenge would be scaled to the amount of players.This allows everyone to still do the content and always feel the same challenge,within reason,less than 5 or 6 gets lame.
There is nothing in a 40 man raid you can't do in a simple 6 man group ,.unless the developer is incompetent.If the main challenge is a high Boss regen then scale it down to meet the player count,if it is the hit points then scale that back,if it is the adds then scales those back,it is ALWAYS doable at ANY size group as long as all needed mechanics are covered,example healing,tanking dps ect ect.You most certainly do NOT need 40 players to cover all base.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I reluctantly have to agree with this. As much as I want to love Wildstar and I want them to put 2004 behind them and get with the modern times I understand that there is a niche out there that wants to go back to Vanilla WoW and that it isn't me. Unfortunately, and this is where I totally agree with you, Carbine decided to try and cater to both crowds the hardcore and the casual. This was a mistake to do. They should have spent considerably less and focused on the hardcore only and they could have been a niche game like EvE. If that is what they sold to NCSoft and then it might have worked out better for them. Of course I can't speak for NCSoft, but I have a feeling they didn't ask for 100+ million to make a AAA Big Budget rollercoaster niche game that only caters to the hardcore time sink crowd.
This has been information that various dev studios have known for years.
Raids just aren't that popular. They cater to the top 1-5% of your game. This is why fewer and fewer games have been offering them as a selling point. It's another example of a feature that devs have hard evidence to support its worth, and we (as gamers) keep claiming 'its dumb that they don't offer this feature because I like it'.
To compound the problem, look at how raids function. If they don't offer the best loot, they 'aren't worth doing' and thus, the majority of players ignore them.
So the design forces itself into a catch-22. Either you make raids less important (in which case people don't do them), thus allowing the 95-99% of your playerbase that are non-raiders still enjoy the game on a competitive level. Or you please the raiders, make raiding the ultimate gear progression, and alienate most of your playerbase.
There may be a few designs that would help ease this issue, but I've yet to see any games incorperate them. And even still, that's not to say that there wouldn't still be a population problem, because gamers will still bitch about raiding (either it's too much, or not enough) because that's just what we do.
- Honestly, this whole problem comes from the skinner-box gear grind design mentallity. Everyone wants the best shiny, and the idea of getting it makes them feel like they're enjoying the game. Take it away, and they feel empty, or that the game isn't worth playing anymore.
if you design games that aren't based around obtaining better & better loot, it eliminates many of these problems. However, it's also almost certainly going to be a less successful game, because we've been indoctrinated to enjoy skinner-box models.
To me, good old days were UBRS 10-mans, LBRS, Stratholme, Dire Maul and maybe Onyxia. I never liked 40 man raids which lasted for hours.
Used to love ZG. A variety of raids for different raid group sizes would make sense. Having all of your raids as 40-mans just makes them a pain in the arse.
The difference with Blizzard at the time of vanilla was two fold: -
1) If the raids were gated the attunement was relatively easy to achieve.
2) WOW had shitloads of players- a much larger pool to get a 40 man from.
So, what you are saying is that we need a uber successful sandbox game to shift the MMO paradigm away from themepark mode. Like, a MMO Minecraft where we work together to build the world, literally.
That would be sweet.
Would only work if we could also go around destroying everything that people make in game... because land is expensive and my castle deserves to be there, not yours.
You may not be entirely wrong. The problem with raids in general is getting people. I would go out on a limb as much to say that the number of people playing a single MMO these days is a fraction of what it used to be. There are more options out there, meaning fewer dedicated raiders.
In WoW, we would always do guild runs. Based on raid difficulty, it's the only way to ensure consistent performance. I haven't played Wildstar, but if the difficulty ramp is what they say, then getting a reliable 40-man might be extremely difficult, nearing impossible.
I consider myself a retired raider now (I almost exclusively do raid finder as of MoP in WoW). Wildstar might have to move in the same direction and introduce a watered down version of 40-mans complete with PUG utility. Either that or just the PUG utility as long as the kick button isn't on a crazy cooldown.
Crazkanuk
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What the heck is wrong with a variety? 40,25,15,10 Everyone wants everything catered to suit them. The 40 man raiders will be pissed if the 25 man's receive equivalent gear and the 25 man will be pissed if the 10 man receive said gear and vice versa... bitch, whine, cry, etc. etc.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
That would certainly be one way of doing it. And a lot of developers are indeed trying what you just mentioned (EQN, Trove, etc.)
I wouldn't look at it as themepark vs. sandbox, though. In a way those are basically just content delivery mechanisms. It really doesn't matter whether a game is a sandbox, themepark, sandpark, or themebox. What matters it what drives people to play the game. As long as its loot (gear, w/e), it will have the same issues I mentioned. Even if it's a sandbox, thempark, or any other type of design.
What needs to happen (imho) is a game that focuses more on resources, where loot is less important; and it's more about what you do with the features in the game (how you customize you're character, what you build, what you destroy, etc.) that drive the gameplay. There are some games that have tried this, but they've been mostly unpopular.
The problem, again, goes back to people being used to the skinner-box model, and being 'addicted' (for lack of a better word) to constantly obtaining better loot.
I for one am in favor of adding variety. Just because a raid is 10 man or 20 man doesn't mean that it needs to be easier, it just needs less people. As most of us who played WoW seen 10 man raiding for the most part destroyed 25 man raiding because it's simply easier to organize. I am for variety if, a 10 man raid is just as difficult as the 20 man version and rewards similar loot then most people will pick the 10 man.
This is why I support a variety of raids with similar difficulty, something like blizzard did in TBC. You had 10 man and 25 man raid instances both rewarding the same tier loot but you weren't forced to raid either and in fact most guilds did both.
Variety is the spice of life and all that. A very few 40 mans, quite a few 25's and more 10 man's makes sense to me. Let people choose their poison.
What people really want is a 1 man raid... it's where the game is headed.
And I don't know what game you played in TBC, but all the real raids were 25-man. Spend any time, any time at all in Sunwell Plateau in TBC?
Id like to point out that there is only a handful of guilds in the world even working on attunment for 40 mans atm and its entirely possible not even one guild has enough fully attuned for datascape.
It will be some time before your average raid group are running two groups through GA and then even longer before they are in datascape.
So I don't see how you can say blizzard was right when carbine has yet to be given ample chance to be proven wrong. Talk in a year when a substantial number of players have had chance to take cracks at the actual 40 man content.
The problem is that raiding is somewhat problematic by design.
For one, a large part of the difficulty of raiding comes from organizing a large group of players. Once you do that and know the fights it becomes fairly easy again (if not drama-packed on occasion).
Secondly, to have raids you need incentives. And this has always been 'you get the best gear in the game'. As long as that is the incentive to raid, you can't really have a variety. People who are interesting in raids (at all), always want to go after the best loot. They want to progress as far as possible, and be the 'top PvE players'.
Having variety in your raids (while I do agree with it), becomes irrelevant with this incentive in place. Either raid X gives the best loot, or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, you can bet that fewer and fewer people will actually run it. You see this in every game that does raiding. The current 'best' raids (with the best loot) get run repeatedly, and all the old ones start to catch more and more dust and neglect.
Karazhan was the pinnacle of TBC raid design imo, but I did enjoy BT and Sunwell as well. You can't beat a good 10 man in my opinion, it's the perfect balance between time to get people together and the ability to make content more difficult. With fewer people, I believe the content actually can be made more difficult and less forgiving. The hard part of any content over 20 people is just getting people together to do it, the raids were never that hard, even in Vanilla WoW. It's just a time factor.
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Actually I raided in TBC in a 25 man guild, and cleared everything including SWP pre 3.0. Before you call me a liar http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sargeras/Spankypanky/simple is my toon if you feel the need to validate my claim.
I am a fan of hardcore raids but my point is that 40 mans are a step up in terms of organization even from 25 mans which is why blizzard did away with 40's. The reason that they went to the 10 man/25 man format in WOTLK was because too many people complained about not being able to see T6 in TBC so the original thought was we will keep 25 mans for the more hardcore and have 10 mans be for more casual types which personally I didn't mind that model. The issue came to play when they made 10/25 reward all the same titles/loot/etc which then in turn caused a lot of guilds to split up.
I favored the TBC raiding where there were a variety of raids, both 10 and 25 and the 25 man raids were gated from tier to tier. Which basically meant that anyone could run Kara or ZA but only a people in 25 man guilds could run 25 mans.
I agree but there is a natural progression that occurred in TBC. You hit lvl 70, got a full set of dungeon blues, attuned for kara then started running Kara. If you didn't have a guild or were a guild looking to recruit Kara was a great place to scout early on in the expansion. Everyone needed the Kara gear to be able to down the 25 mans early on so you ran Kara for a few weeks then walked into Gruuls which was a step up in difficulty but again there was a natural progression between 10 and 25.
I'm with you on this. 10 - 15 is a sweet spot for me. It's why I love the idea of Flex Raiding so much. When I think of 40 man raid I think vikings raiding a village and killing and plundering. That's more PVP . When I think of Raiding in the way it's viewed in an MMO I think of a small band of adventurers traversing a deadly mine or underground city taking on tough monsters with their skills. I don't think of 40 people zerging into a dragon's lair.
D&D doesn't have that. No fantasy movies have that. Look at Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. It's not 1 hobbit and 39 dwarves. That is way too cluttered for me. I want the 10-15 of us to seem hopelessly outnumbered in this giant awesome area with big crazy monsters etc. That's epic.
I wouldn't say Blizzard knows best but yeah raiding as it exists in MMORPGs sucks ass on many levels.
Some rogue stabbing a dragon in the foot with a dagger that probably can't even extend enough to get past the scales. Yeah its completely assinine. What is he using a it like a trowel and digging a frigging hole?
You a good 40 man raid? Send 400 mobs at them from 5 different direction. Don't just give them a boss that is like super duper holy guacmole awesome because he is like super big and stuff and junk. Everyone knows bigger is better amirite?
The whole thing is just such cheap ass crap.