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The ultimate way to make everyone happy.
NeonShadow
Member UncommonPosts: 326
Ok, I lied. This might not be the "Ultimate" way to make casuals AND raiders happy in WoW but atleast I'm giving this idea a shot. So, the whole "Raiders vs Casuals" thing is very, very old as we all know it. And I see casuals asking for 5 man instances etc. other new content but all they give us is new raid dungeons. So I thought "hey, why can't the new 40-man raid instances be 5 manned? Or 10 manned?". Here's the catch, thought. Instances get harder the more people enter it, but the stats on the item's get better too. The less people are doing the instance, the weaker the items you get from bosses are. See? So, what is everyone's thought on this? I know this will never happen but it could work. All the new content they have added in the past month's would be open to everyone. Hope to see some c&c!
/puts on tinfoil hat
P.S. I was a raider when I was still playing WoW.
Edit: Also any suggestions on way's to improve this idea are welcome.
Comments
I'm sorry, but how does this change the current situation?
that system is currently implanted. if you want end game gear, you will have to do 5 man dungeons. if you want the best of the best gear, you will have to raid. with your system, it won't change except you will have a diffrent dungeon.
Casuals and non-raiders won't be happy until they can get the same items as raiders with half the effort.
Would not work because the stats is what ppl are after.Thus the raids.Maybe make it that 5 man instances drop same stats like 40 man but 10 times rarer or something might be a good idea.
Anyhow to make me happy and return you need to pump content into the game as this is whats lacking whether you are a raider doing the 4 or 5 raid zones over and over again for months,a crafter,a quester,pvper or a casual gamer who wants to do small instances.Content is the key and its very lacking across the board at 60.
WoW is a gear based game. All significant rewards that people aspire are gear. Xp is fairly constant is not really considered a reward.
As long as you reward a subset of the player base more than the rest of the players you will have unhappy people.
I hate to raid. I will never pay money to raid. In fact you would need to pay me money to raid. If I started playing WoW again I'd be a second class citizen even if I played 24 hours a day. When I played WoW I a very good player. No one ever complained about my healing ir tanking. I could have raided if I wanted. As a druid almost any guild would have taken me. Yet I apparently deserve less than raiders.
There is no reason raiders need better gear. 5-10 mans could be tuned to require similar gear to whatever raid dungeons they were paralleled to. Wow does not work that way because someone decided raiders deserve better stuff. Those of us who will never raid, for whatever reason, will always be inferior.
Why would I play a game that is designed to make me inferior when I play the way I want to?
What's key about this is the type of effort. If you're talking about effort in terms of learning to play your character, learning to work well with other people, and learning to react quickly to situations, non-raiders and especially PVPers already put in far more effort than raiders for less reward.
If you're talking about effort in terms of coordinating weekly schedules, putting up with drama, enduring boring, challengeless gameplay, creating and gaming accounting systems for loot distribution, and otherwise treating the game as a job, then it's a bit different. Most people don't want any of that nonsense in a game at all.
funny that a retention rate of barely 2 months is an idicator that the average gamer leaves BECAUSE of the endgame
Well if raiders do not get better gear then another group of players will moan.
I think in this aspect is where EQ2 differs.Maybe because they had EQ1 which was geared so much to raids.
WoW took up the EQ1 style of end game.EQ2 tried to correct it and did not even do a perfect job.
In EQ2 spells>anything.It upgrades from app1 to master spells.A bard for instance with a power regen master spell is worth 10x a bard with adept 1 regen song with best gear on server in any group.
Even a tank who is the represenation of gear would be better off with that master of a stamina buff then a epic(called fabled in EQ2) piece.
This spells drop randomly off solo named,1 group instances or raids so there is more an element of luck.PPL raid of course in EQ2 to get gear which gives them an edge but the spells are way more important.
Sadly in my time in WoW gear matters so much i think they even surpassed the gear oriented ways of EQ1.
Blizzard needs to head to drawing board and figure out how to get non raiders and the casuals(afterall they sold the game as a casual friendly game in the first place) to be at least some degree of competition to raiders.
Give raiders an edge but a small margin.
See, it's that kind of attitude that made me finally leave WoW. Let me explain why people complain about raiding.
First, a non-raider does not equal "casual." Second, raider does not equal "hardcore."
At my worst, I was spending 30+ hours a week in the Battlegrounds. Anyone who calls that casual needs treatment. The problem with WoW is that, if you want to seriously PvP, you have to raid first to get geared. If you want to craft the best stuff, you need to raid to get the needed ingredients - and the items are still inferior to raid drops. If you want to lead a guild, you have to schedule raids to keep people. In short, the reason people complain about raiding is because they feel forced to do it. And not everyone has fun raiding or wants to put up with time commitments or inevitable guild politics.
Yes, there are people who enjoy raiding. It does not make you hardcore. It makes you someone who likes raiding. It's all a matter of perspective. In most of the games I've played, someone who spends all their time with a max-level character killing monsters is called a carebear. Raiding is one of many niches that MMO players fall into. The big problem is that the most accessible MMO on the market transforms itself into a niche game once you max out a character. And that, in a nutshell, is why people complain about raiding.
Well if raiders do not get better gear then another group of players will moan.
I think in this aspect is where EQ2 differs.Maybe because they had EQ1 which was geared so much to raids.
WoW took up the EQ1 style of end game.EQ2 tried to correct it and did not even do a perfect job.
In EQ2 spells>anything.It upgrades from app1 to master spells.A bard for instance with a power regen master spell is worth 10x a bard with adept 1 regen song with best gear on server in any group.
Even a tank who is the represenation of gear would be better off with that master of a stamina buff then a epic(called fabled in EQ2) piece.
This spells drop randomly off solo named,1 group instances or raids so there is more an element of luck.PPL raid of course in EQ2 to get gear which gives them an edge but the spells are way more important.
Sadly in my time in WoW gear matters so much i think they even surpassed the gear oriented ways of EQ1.
Blizzard needs to head to drawing board and figure out how to get non raiders and the casuals(afterall they sold the game as a casual friendly game in the first place) to be at least some degree of competition to raiders.
Give raiders an edge but a small margin.
Who cares if they moan? They will moan if they can't be better than everyone else? That is childish and ridiculous and they will rightfully be shouted down.
Yes there is an extremely vocal segement of raiders that demand that they be exalted above others. But there are all sorts of unreasonable whines. You get all kinds of silly nerf calls etc. Sure that segment of raider insist that their playstyle is harder and superior. But so what? There are a bajillion rogues and mages who want to one shot everyone they come across. That segment of the raiders is just as ridiculous and childish as that segement of the DPS classes. That sad thing is Blizzard agrees with them.
I'm sorry but I won't accept that raiders deserve anything better. And further it is far more important to resist the urge to mess up your game by making it lopsided than by rewarding childish, greedy people. The vocal greedy segment of raiders always claim that not giving them the best trivializes their accomplishments. Of course they conveniently ignore the other side of the the coin. That they are implicitly advocating and acknowledging they want to trivialize everyone else.
Like my post said giving a minor and slight edge to raiders will be enough to keep them raiding and others happy espically in pvp in which the gear issue is so so important.
Ofc i do not expect them to use EQ2 formula that makes the spell the main balancing points and having each spell have a different grade(no its not like the WoW as u level u get a new spell.its like i said each spell has the ability to be better) and this are random drops.
The game is totally designed at a different angle for that.
But i think they need to review the way you gain rank in pvp and let ppl progress in their own time to gain the ultimate gear.And then make pvp gear and quest gear just slightly worse then raid gear.Heck make quest long but something soloable or one group do able.
Again i am mentioning gear because i think the system in wow is already too entrenched in gear.
I always thought it was hilarious when someone would say they're leaving because of the various unfun aspects of the game and people would respond with 'ohh, Blizzard has to have those in game, they're designed to keep you playing'.
They taken it too far now and theres no turning back with the current end game.. either live with it or cancell.
If one is acceptable why isn't the other?
Sure you can minimize the difference so people are less pissed. So if we follow that route why not take it even farther? Why not minimize the number of people pissed by making raiding inferior instead of 5-10 mans inferior? Even by Kaplan's admission raiders are a minority so lets give them the sh*tend of the stick to minmize as much as we can. Now we minimized the gap and the number of people for whom the gap is a problem.
Isn't that an even better solution?
Or you could make the both equivalent.
Yeah its a moot point since they show no indication of changing their raiding is better philosophy.
Ever since I have gotten my tier 0, I refuse to do the 5-10 man raids unless they are guild only and I need them. For example, I haven't done scholo since I hit 60, only doing now for the AD rep. I love raiding the 20-40 man instances.
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Wu forever
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Currently Playing: WoW
[Thizzin: Level 80 Undead Mage(Mug'Thol PvP)]
If one is acceptable why isn't the other?
Sure you can minimize the difference so people are less pissed. So if we follow that route why not take it even farther? Why not minimize the number of people pissed by making raiding inferior instead of 5-10 mans inferior? Even by Kaplan's admission raiders are a minority so lets give them the sh*tend of the stick to minmize as much as we can. Now we minimized the gap and the number of people for whom the gap is a problem.
Isn't that an even better solution?
Or you could make the both equivalent.
Wihout reward ppl will not do things even if its a better option years of mmorpg has proven that.
Look how many complain that the BG are boring and open warfare like the old TM/SS is needed and apparently blizzard finally bringing it.
But yet ppl stood endless queues for BS for the zillion times and moaned rather then go into open warfare.Single reason-rewards!
Raiders will just moan and not raid if what you suggest happens and quite frankly i cannot see this happening.
The direction of WoW is set and its very hard to change it without a SWG kind of fiasco.The best they can do it soften the effects as the gap between the raider and casual gamer is really gone ridicolous now.
Wihout reward ppl will not do things even if its a better option years of mmorpg has proven that.
Look how many complain that the BG are boring and open warfare like the old TM/SS is needed and apparently blizzard finally bringing it.
But yet ppl stood endless queues for BS for the zillion times and moaned rather then go into open warfare.Single reason-rewards!
Raiders will just moan and not raid if what you suggest happens and quite frankly i cannot see this happening.
The direction of WoW is set and its very hard to change it without a SWG kind of fiasco.The best they can do it soften the effects as the gap between the raider and casual gamer is really gone ridicolous now.
Yes this is pretty much right. However their easiest best solution would be to have the rep/base items drop in a raid instance and a paired 10 man instance. They already have the set pieces technically outside the instance, its jsut the rep and materials that are in Naxx etc.
Its all moot as I said above; they are dedicated to their paradigm.
At later levels, even medium-level hardcore (not quite the hardcore of hardcore) players are permanently at rested state, so this system doesn't even matter anymore. Is what should be done is ever-increasing rested-exp. Once traditional rested EXP maxes out, a new marker is made. Up to this marker, exp is earned at triple the rate. When that marker maxes out, another one is made that signals quadruple EXP, and so on until a player that hasn't played a character in a while can gain a level and a half almost instantly. Before you start whining about how no "effort" is involved, keep in mind the only way to get to level 60 with "no effort" using this system would be to leave a character alone for some 2 months, play for 1.5 levels, then leave the character alone for another 2 months. Rested EXP would be a much more dynamic system than affect different levels of casual players than something that is always on.
What does this have to do with gear, you say? Make gear a more predictable thing. Maybe earn "luck" points so that when they do the raid, if they've gone long enough without earning an uber item, their "luck" points kick in and give them the item (no rolls necessary, no chance of it being ninja-ed). A player could probably be guaranteed one piece of equipment per month using this system so if they do the raid once a month (instead of every week like the hardcore player) then they could be guaranteed at least one item. Or perhaps another system could be used. There's a system to support and encourage the casual player on the 1-60 portion of the game, but there's no such mechanism to support a casual player at level 60.
Other possibilities include combining temporary and permanent honor points. A player can PvP their rear off and earn tons of temporary honor (just like the existing system now) and get their PvP gear sooner, but some portion (probably capped) of that honor is kept as permanent honor and their rank can never decline below that. Thus a casual player, after maybe doing a battleground a week for 12 months might be able to get the high end PvP gear. Meanwhile the hardcore PvPer that grinds honor every hour of the day could earn it in just 4 weeks or less.
Blizzard had the right idea in adding mechanics to support casual play, but they haven't pushed them hard enough.
If you're talking about effort in terms of coordinating weekly schedules, putting up with drama, enduring boring, challengeless gameplay, creating and gaming accounting systems for loot distribution, and otherwise treating the game as a job, then it's a bit different. Most people don't want any of that nonsense in a game at all.
VERY... very... well said!!!! *two thumbs up*
Now raid saves do help this to some extent, but the fact is that the current raid system defintely favors the catass since there are multiple things you need to run and the farming system etc.
They originally tried to moderate things but it has all been for naught, as time goes on the trend towards being catass has now reached fruition. I don't really think there is, any longer, a significant advocacy for a trend towards keeping catass mechanics in check.