Synthesis
Apr 26 2010, 02:10 PM
QUOTE
* 10-Man and 25-Man raids will share the same lockout.
* 10-Man and 25-Man raids difficulty will be as close as possible to each other.
* 10-Man and 25-Man raids will drop the exact same loot, but 25-man will drop a higher quantity of items.
* Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel
* For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid.
Synthesis
Apr 26 2010, 02:31 PM
I can see the balancing working, but I can't see mechanics improving.
Things like healing required and damage intake and output will likely be balanced to have roughly the same difficulty on 10 and 25 man since all encounters will be balanced around having a single level of ilvl for its tier, and the only factors then become the number of inputs, such as how many healers you have for 25 compared to the 2 or 3 you bring to 10.
What I can't see is difficulty being balanced around interesting mechanics. Defile is a prime example of a mechanic that can't be outgeared, since it ignores gear altogether. Running 25 people out of Defile in an efficient way is always going to be harder than running 10, just because of sheer numbers and increase of risk.
That's fine, but when you have a mechanic such as that where the increase of risk does not increase the quality of reward (since 10 and 25 are both dropping the same loot) there becomes significantly less incentive for a large portion of the player base to willingly put forth effort, patience, and determination to complete a 25man counterpart.
This model seems fine overall. For the majority of content it will be fine. But a lot of the direction of this guild and the player base that leads progression is done at the margin. When you come to an encounter such as Lich King, which I believe is a great show of this, what's the point of pushing for a 25man kill if the 10man has been on farm for 2 weeks? I hate to admit it, and I don't agree with it, but you can't be blind to the fact that many people don't play this game for the progression of clearing hard content. They play it because clearing hard content is a means to an end, that end being getting gear.
If you provide no incentive aside from increases in quantity of loot dropped, you'll lose all but the ones purely dedicated to enjoying encounters that have higher dynamics and higher risk.
A second problem is that it makes me feel what I felt like from Vanilla -> BC. Going from 40 man to 25 man, I still believe, gutted a lot of the higher order of raiding that players looked forward to obtaining. Aside from having the epic feel of a ton of people and the larger community that it brought into a raid, you lost mechanics.
At the end of Naxx40 we talked about how you'd ever handle making an encounter like the Four Horsemen without the versatility of 40 players. And look at the 25man version - the two north horses just stand in place. In 10man Instructor Razuvious, there's a orb to mind control for you that you just click.
If they want 10mans to be "as close as possible to 25mans", they better come up with some damn interesting mechanics if they're going to continue to slay how much depends on individual player performance in terms of doing things inside of a raid that isn't just tanking, healing, or dps.
Demotts
Apr 26 2010, 04:08 PM
I agree with all of this, Rec. While I do enjoy bigger raids because of the risk, thrill, and larger community, I would be lying if I told anyone I wasn't also in it for the better rewards and status that comes with it. That being said, even if rewards were removed or equalized, I'd still raid in order to play with the friends. I just hope that they can pull off this downsizing and actually retain some form of entertaining game play.
