WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.

So, this is the work I did on how the difficulty of raiding has seemingly shot up since earlier times in the game.  Ghostcrawler has seen it, commented on it via Twitter, and the debate has moved on from the sticky points some tried to mire it in:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1304374-WotLK-to-MoP-A-Trend-Analysis-of-Raiding-Difficulty

If you want to get involved, I'd love it - however, you'll need an MMO-C account which is blessedly easy to set up.  All of Ghostcrawler's tweets are in at the bottom of the opening post, just so you can see how Blizzard view the causes of the issue.

Enjoy. :)

Is 'casual engagement' really to blame?

Okay, so, the preamble is pretty simple.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria has managed to shed nigh-on a fifth of its subscribers from its launch high point.

As is usual with news of this type, everyone has an opinion on it, and I feel the need to share mine.  First things first, however, let’s try and keep the usual crowd satisfied by putting a few things out there first.  Namely, the simple fact that the game has been in decline since early Cataclysm, and it may be nothing at all to do with the quality of the game itself.

Here’s how:

- We have a more heavily populated MMORPG market.
- There’s stagnation amongst the MMORPG design studios.
- World of Warcraft is pushing a decade and many believe it’s looking dated.
- Many players have played for years and naturally moved on.
- The game remains the most heavily subscribed MMORPG by a mile.

Hopefully, that little set of caveats will keep the usual screamers at bay.  The next list is my viewpoints on some of the criticisms (and praises) I’ve seen of the current expansion, and they inform my overall conclusion.

THESE POINTS ARE PURELY MY OPINION, AND ARE OPEN FOR DEBATE.

- There’s never been more to do in the game than there is now.
- Normal raiding is too punitive, and LFR simply isn’t a substitute.
- The community, even within guilds, has taken a significant hit.
- CRZ’s did nothing to ease the legitimate problems with low-pop servers.
- The talent/glyph redesign has caused significant homogenization.

With all of that said, I find the press release blaming a “lack of engagement from casual players” to be absolutely staggering.  I literally don’t see how the loss can be attributed to such a thing when all of the evidence seems to point to the contrary.  Levelling is as quick and easy as it’s ever been, there are far more types of content than ever before, and the level of entry is sufficiently easy for all but the most difficult of people.  As an additional side to this, any criticism of the Blizzard work ethic on MoP will be laughed off for the sheer silliness that it is; the developers have worked extremely hard on this expansion.

I also want to desperately avoid comparisons to the past, as such comparisons are a minefield for those with an axe to grind.

So what’s gone wrong?

For me, the blame lies with the raiding model that has almost single-handedly crushed casual progression guilds.  I’m on record as saying that LFR was born out of a necessity from Cataclysm, a necessity that made normal mode raiding brutally punishing on normal guilds.  That hangover has continued into MoP where more casual players were promised easier content to welcome them in, but have been treated to laughingly simple five-man heroics that lead to extraordinarily punitive raids.  I fear for the game if this continues.

Prior to Cataclysm, casual players could progress nicely in small groups of their friends.  Stronger players could carry weaker players, things like VOIP programs weren’t required, and the content didn’t patronize those who were unable to do it for whatever reason.  Even as far back as The Burning Crusade, Karazhan was a mechanically simple instance that players could work through at a leisurely pace and progress their characters.  The advent of a 10-man version of every raid in WotLK took this premise even further, again allowing small communities of chums to get together and play some content.

This is now practically impossible.

Much of the debate around dailies in 5.0 centred around the “hardcore” feeling like such things were mandatory.  That’s because a specific Blizzard employee, Draztal, forced the debate in that direction.  Where the debate didn’t look was how difficult raiding content was affecting the more casual raiding guilds that were left behind after Arthas.  After hitting the level cap and gearing through easy heroic dungeons, many of these guilds were hitting a brick wall on the very first boss of the tier.  The only way to get over this was to farm valor points or LFR, with the former requiring a reputation grind and the latter requiring a healthy dose of luck with no redundancy for dry spots.

In short, the grind of 5.0 hit the smaller, more casual communities that wanted to raid harder than it hit anyone else.

The second issue I have is one that has little to do with gear; it’s to do with player skill.  Now, it can easily be argued that players should just get better, but surely it should also be the choice of a guild leader to carry a weaker player or two because they’re great guild mates and fun for everyone to play with.  This has become nigh-on impossible because the normal raiding scene is flooded with bosses that have tight enrages or individual mechanics that can cause a single player to wipe an entire raid.  Even if you can get players to learn some of the more basic mechanics, they’re still going to have to put in a lot of effort outside of the game to increase their DPS, healing or encounter knowledge to a point where they won’t be a burden.

I honestly dread to think how many guilds have been obliterated by this approach.

Now, what’s making this problem worse, is its knock-on effect.  By this I mean, where is the new talent that better guilds need supposed to come from?  Mike Preach was recently talking about the dearth of tanks, but when the time and performance requirements for a normal guild with normal progression get jacked up to the point they’re at now, people tend to simply fall by the wayside and find other things to do that aren’t so demanding.  This then leaves server-competitive guilds with no pool to draw on, practically cutting the throat of the recruitment churn.

LFR was designed, in my eyes, with the express intent of allowing those who couldn’t meet raiding schedules the opportunity to see content.  It’s now morphed into the sole catch-up mechanic for the game, as well as the sole way for casual players to develop their characters.  When so called casual players are treated to a 25-man ghetto of impatience, elitism and inability, it’s little wonder they want next to no part in it when all they get for their efforts is countless bags of gold.

Here’s a tip: casual players want to develop their characters, too.

At this point in 5.2, you have a single way of doing that.  LFR.  The only other option is to put in the time required to be a normal-mode or heroic raider, a door not open to casual players.  In Blizzard’s rush to get out more forms of content and more ways to play the game, they forgot about those who like developing their characters.

And don’t get me started on the dismantling of “alting”.  I raid three times a week, I’m relatively successful, yet I’m still only well geared on a single spec of a single class.  The amount of time I’d have to put into getting an alt ready for this patch, not to mention the drop in ability I’d have to account for somehow, almost makes me weep.

This has got to change.

I don’t want this thread to become a whinefest of Blizzard hate, nor do I want the fanboys out in force.  Nobody can argue that Blizzard haven’t put a ton of effort into MoP and keep a straight face.  But the game is on the wane, and the very communities that are the lifeblood of servers are the ones that are being inadvertently hammered by some of these design choices.

Having said all that, I move on to my usual finishing line for these essays.

What do YOU think?

The LFR "community"; is there a fix?

I was recently bemoaning the nasty consequences of the LFR queue on Twitter, when I had a bit of a back and forth with Hiratha on the subject.  Essentially what had happened was that I’d queued for the final section of LFR and gotten only Lei Shen.  I needed to kill him anyway, so did so and then burned a coin in the hope of picking up the only stamina trinket in the tier.  I then re-queued, got stuck with solely Lei Shen again, but chose to blow another of my three coins for the same item.

This left me about 50 gold richer as well as a few valor points heavier.

Alas, the next time I queued, I got stuck with Lei Shen again and immediately dropped.  Cue me getting hit with a 30 minute debuff for simply not wanting to kill the same boss three times, including the accompanying wipes as new or bad players get things wrong.  As you can imagine, this infuriated me to the point that I didn’t want to play the game at all any longer that day, so I logged off in disgust.

It was here when Hira said Lei Shen was probably too hard, a comment I had to think about for a while.

The Point in LFR is…?

I’ve already discussed, many times, that the queue itself isn’t a bad thing.  Personally, I think LFR is superfluous to the needs of the game and it’s having several extremely negative effects on everything else, however inadvertent they are.  That having been said, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that LFR, in and of itself, is a form of progression for players who can’t submit to the timetable of a guild, or who aren’t skilled enough to progress through normal modes.

I’d even accept someone telling me that’s the majority of the game’s players.

Yet in many places, LFR is described nowadays as a “ghetto”.  That’s how bad the community has gotten in recent times.  The simple-minded will argue that it’s anecdotal and that I can’t possibly prove this viewpoint, but I have absolutely no doubt that the game’s community has gone down the pan; everyone I know who’s played since prior to Wrath agrees with this.  But I’m not sure this is because people are more entitled, less patient or just bigger douchebags than ever before.

I reckon it’s to do with people wanting different things from the same content.

This isn’t a revelatory thing to say, but at no stage in WoW’s history has it ever been more prevalent.  LFR is lumping people onto the same bosses, most wanting entirely different things, and then hoping it all goes well.  It’s not.  If someone only wants that elusive upgrade, or they’re chasing reputation or legendary items, then they’re not going to enjoy spending any more time than is absolutely necessary in the queue.  They want to get in, get out and shake it all about.  When you suggest that perhaps a bit of patience would suit them better, that helping their raid mates would be more profitable, you’re met with either expletives or commentary along the lines of “they should know the fight before they come in here”.

But that’s not why LFR was designed.

It was designed for those who didn’t have the time to commit to a schedule (whether by choice or necessity), as a means of allowing them to experience a bit of endgame.  Expecting such players to watch YouTube guides or read the dungeon journal, frankly, is a bit too much.  In every single LFR I’ve bothered to check out, at least four people have shown up without gems or enchantments on their gear, so it’s pretty safe to assume they won’t know how a boss works.  On encounters that end up in wipes when people die off (Durumu’s maze the primary example of this tier), it’s no wonder that players who don’t want to be in LFR lose their patience with it.

Yet this is where Hira’s comment makes me shake my head.

How are we supposed to get people to care about doing things right, or developing their game, if LFR is designed to guarantee success regardless?

If we take the cynical view, the view that says Blizzard deliberately want real raiders in there to boost people, you can understand why this happens.  But making content easier simply punishes those for whom it IS their only progression.  I fully believe there are people who want to go into LFR with a group of like-minded casual players, in the appropriate gear, and learn how to kill bosses.  I’m serious.  This “LFR community” is absolutely not to blame for the poisonous atmosphere.  The blame lies with Blizzard for forcing people into it when they don’t want to be.  I’m chasing legendary items and reputation, as well as trying to get some bad slots filled on my gear.  I do NOT want to be in LFR, but I feel I have to be to progress my character along.

Is it any wonder I don’t want to wipe four times on Lei Shen because people can’t play the game?

Is there a better way?

 

Now, just to be clear, I almost always take the time to stick up for new players and try to help them to play the game better.  We were all new at one point, which means we all had to learn to play in a bygone age.  But I don’t care how patient you are, you’re not going to enjoy developing as a player when a relatively innocent mistake is treated to a cacophony of vitriolic booing.  Yet, those doing the booing just want the loot roll before they go and raid with their guilds, they’re not into helping people because (fairly enough) it’s not their job to be developing players who are going to play no part in their own progression.  Expecting that to be different is simply not a realistic expectation.

Alas, I’m not sure there’s a solution – Pandora’s Box has been opened.

Those using LFR for their casual progression need the reputation, legendary items, gear and valor from the queue.  And they should get them, because being a casual player shouldn’t mean you miss out on things.  But I just don’t see a sophisticated way of getting players out of LFR without punishing them.  As most people know, I think LFR is a self-licking lollipop, something that the game didn’t need and is covering up for a more systemic issue.  But we’re stuck with it now, and try as I might I can’t come up with a way of making LFR of no interest to legitimate raiders without making it effectively pointless for everyone else.

Can you?

Once more; the bottom of the barrel.

I understand some of the typical responses to this, just as I understand how it's likely to end up; but quite honestly, I've been putting up with this since The Burning Crusade and I'm getting sick of it.

Protection warriors are, yet again, unacceptably poor in terms of DPS.

At time of writing, due to the limited number of parses in heroic, the normal Throne of Thunder is telling the age old story that Blizzard seem intent on continuing - warriors are the worst DPS tanks in the game.  On 25-man normal content, warriors are dragging up the rear on three separate encounters, while being second last on seven of them.  Damningly, we're not managing a single averaged top spot for 25 man normal encounters and we're the only tank in this boat.

Hardest hitters on nothing, bottom two on no less than 10 of 12 encounters.

Alas, this looks like pumpkin pie when you look at the tragedy of our 10 man performance.  Warriors are dead last on every single encounter in 10-man; sometimes, unbelievably, by as much as 30k or more...  With a 50k jump, just for good measure.  Even when you try and look for encounters where tanks are likely doing similar things (single-target ish), warriors are averaging well over 20k less than the top spot.

Why is this still the case after all these years?

Seriously?  More than enough time has passed to have seen this fixed.

Frankly, it's disgusting.

We can argue until the cows come home why this is happening.  Maybe it's because monks and druids are using what passes for DPS leather, or 10-man paladins love haste.  Maybe it's because warriors are overly reliant on Vengeance given that Shield Slam, pretty much our only attack that does anything, wholly revolves around attack power that we don't pick up elsewhere.

But none of that matters.  Warriors were nerfed coming in to 5.2 when we were already dead last in the DPS race, under the ridiculous auspice that we were being buffed.  A few resets later and the truth is painted in bright letters to Greg Street, proving what the theorycrafters told him; the so-called buff was a net nerf, and one that's simply compounded one class at the bottom of the ladder for the sixth year running.

For heaven's sake, FIX THIS.

It's understood that not all tanks should be equally good at everything, unless you support homogeneity and I'm not sure anyone really does.  But for one tank to be deliberately made inferior, for no good reason, is unquestionably wrong.  You've been given the benefit of the doubt more times than anyone could ever reasonably ask, yet here we are again begging for necessary buffs just so that we can be COMPETITIVE with our peers.

That cannot be too much to ask.

Luckily, there are some easy places to start.  Revenge and Devastate hit absolutely pitifully in comparison with Shield Slam, so buff them.  The weapon damage percentage on Devastate is too low, while the attack power on Revenge is equally weak.  Easy fixes, and they can be done in no time rather than waiting on a major patch.  Heroic Strike is absolute crap, but can be safely buffed via Ultimatum if you're worried about the impact on other specs.

Don't let this continue into 5.3, seriously.  It would hint that either you lack the professionalism to fix an obvious problem, lack the ability to come up with a solution to it, or simply don't give a monkey's.

'Tis your choice.