10- & 25-Player Raid Loot Changes – Patch 5.2


01/23/2013 04:18 PMPosted by Sacer
I want to look at loot tables and say this is the gear I want to be in at the end of the tier. And have that be an obtainable goal.
Then you need to choose a game to play that doesn't use RNG as the way to get that loot.

As of right now, you have chosen the wrong game, since RNG is how loot is gotten from bosses since WoW went live.
Edited by Zaxan on 1/23/2013 4:24 PM PST
90 Goblin Hunter
90 Night Elf Druid

Getting better loot has always been a part of this game and in Patch 5.2 the variety is being increased. We think this is a good thing. However, calling 25-player raids less favorable in unfounded and an unfair assessment. Tons of players would love to do 25s, but the coordination and effort to do so is more difficult with very little additional reward. 10s aren't more popular because the entire community agreed they're more fun, it's just a simple case of effort versus reward.

Thank you Crithto for recognizing this! You are my favorite pug ever. <3
01/23/2013 04:24 PMPosted by Memgob
Why does it matter?
90 Orc Shaman
First, I wanted to say two things. I am one of two guild leaders of a 25 man guild that has survived since BC, and know full well what that has entailed the past few years and on a personal level I like this new system. From the perspective of the 25 man raiding point of view however, it is crap. I am going to explain in my own words, though I believe others have said similar or the same things.

First of all, for me personally, the idea of previous bosses still having a chance to drop loot that would be an upgrade to me is really attractive. The number of farm bosses that we kill each week that drop absolutely nothing for me and the raid make those fights in some respects rather average, and simply glorified trash fillers while we get to the boss we are trying to kill.

So my initial reaction as I was reading this post, was of interest and liking the idea. Then I thought about how this would affect the raid and I am very concerned. Two concerns really.

The first concern that I have is that this loot system is no different than the current system just with a higher item level. 25 mans have for some time now, and 10 man raiders will agree, had an easier time gearing people than the 10 mans. Many drops are simply easier to come by in the 25 man version and the number of loot drops has been tuned to make it more likely that 25 man raiders gear faster.

This new loot system, is exactly the same. These items still drop in both 10 and 25 and in the same case as the current system it will be somewhat easier to get geared in the 25 man version than the 10 man version.

What gets me with this is that this same system is one we have actually been using now since T11 - and it is quite clear that it has made no difference. Even the additional loot drop added back in for mists has not helped. So, if you could explain the reasoning you have that this will help the situation I am all ears cause frankly, at the very least case scenario, this does nothing at all to help fix the problem.

Now my second concern is an even greater one. It is this concern that I believe has now convinced me that no one in WoW development actually runs a 25 man guild. And I do not mean participate, but actually do the leg work in the organisational areas such as myself and fellow GL has done the past few years to stay afloat.

See in order to run successful progression oriented 25 man guild you have to maintain a floating roster anywhere between 35 and 40 people to cover the nights things happen, and let's be honest, real life tends to take precedence. In order to keep this roster viable, and this is by the way one of the most time consuming aspects of running the guild, we have to ensure that those people not always in on a progression boss, still have opportunities to get gear. This is so that newer players just joined and maybe on trial, or current members still lacking gear, are able to rotate in to bosses where current members do not need gear.

In fact the call on vent for each and every single boss is "Who needs gear off this boss?" - get names then "who doesn't?" and then those people when possible get sat for those people coming in. This works quite well. It gives those players that may be raiding on every boss a break should they choose to do so, or at the very least an opportunity to help fellow raiders out by offering their spot on a boss that no longer drops upgrades for them.

This new system throws that out the window.

Now that there are rare drops that are significant upgrades that drop off these bosses, it is highly unlikely that during progression anyone in the raid is going to have "all the upgrades off that boss". This means that when it comes time to trying to rotate people through our farm bosses no one is going to want to sit for them.

This means that now as GL's we have to decide who sits. We are going to have to come up with some fair way to do so in order to alleviate the concerns of members missing raid bosses which means more work for me and my fellow GL and on top of that it also means that those that we do choose to sit have to have the situation where they have been forcefully sat on bosses that drop gear for them and be unable to choose to participate.

So As far as I can tell, this system will, "best case scenario" have no effect whatsoever on the raid size situation, and the worst case scenario, and one I do not see not happening to be frank, is that you have just single handedly made the running of 25 mans more difficult.

I have to give props to you guys. Never, after waiting years for a response to this situation, and now months of you saying you had ideas in mind, did it occur to me that the situation you were going to try would be so bad that you would actually make matters worse than they already are.

This and a thousand times times this. +100 for a solid post.

Quoting the reply because I don't want to go back and find the original. I don't post very often and won't unless there is something I feel very passionately about. I was a guild leader for a 25 man raiding guild from BC until Dragon Soul in Cata. Running a 25 man raiding guild is one of the most difficult and time consuming things you can possibly do.

Blizzard, if there was ever a post in this entire thread that you want to read, it's the original post this guy made. Making MORE work for leaders of 25 man guilds is NOT what they want (I feel I can speak for them in this regard because I was once in their shoes). When I was in that position what I wanted was an easier way to retain members of my raid team and I wanted an easier way to get more qualified members in my raid team.

Now for my 2 cents, which is entirely off-topic of my above thoughts. When I first heard the suggestion that maybe 25 mans would get Cross Realm raiding, I thought it was a bad idea. But after thinking about it more, that really solves 90% of the problems I had when leading a 25 man guild. The majority of your time is spent recruiting new qualified players. It's incredibly hard to get new players to pay the money to xfer to your server (which you have to do most of the time, especially on a low pop server) without EXPERIENCING the guild first hand. They are very reluctant to spend their hard earned money on you before they have even played with you. Cross realm raiding would allow 25 mans to try out new recruits before they spend the money to xfer. It would allow the recruits to experience the guild before they spend the money to xfer. Both pluses.

The argument can be made that guilds could just raid cross realm and no one would every transfer then. An easy solution to that is put a cap on the number of players that can be in a single raid not on your realm.

The argument can be made the higher end guilds would "sell" runs for gear for Cross Realm players at outrageous amounts. They probably would, so don't allow Cross Realm players to get loot. That also eliminates the potential for people to "say" they are looking for a guild, only to gear up through other peoples raids, which would undoubtedly happen if they had the chance.

The ability for cross realm is already there, we know that because LFR takes advantage of it. Whether or not there are technical limitations on the stipulations I provided above I cannot say. But in my humble opinion, if you truly want to help 25 mans, this would be a HUGE HUGE boon.

Disclaimer: I am a current 10 man raider who wants nothing more than to raid 25 mans again. These changes do not entice me to move to 25 mans simply because it does not address the management concerns I stated above.
90 Blood Elf Mage
I don't think 25-man raiders actually want better loot, just recognition as something different than 10-man.

Split the achievements back into 10/25 and people will be less depressed about 25's.
90 Troll Mage
I raid 25's, we keep a roster of around 30-35 players. I'm assuming most other 25 man guilds do this as well due to logistics of having three of four players absent due to real life contingencies.

The very first thing my guild does when we approach a farm boss is ask in mumble if anyone needs loot off this boss and generally if someone really doesn't need anything off said boss they will volunteer to sit themselves for a trial or another raider that does need a particular drop.

With this system I can't possibly imagine volunteering to sit myself so another raider can see raid time because I could very well be missing a potential Bis piece and I assume most raiders are going to follow this same mindset. Which will in-turn fall back on the very same raid leaders you are attempting to alleviate.

In my opinion, this is a terrible system and you should return to the drawing board.
90 Human Warrior

This post. A thousand times this post.

Coming from the perspective of a guild leader of a former top 25 guild, this new "Thunderforged" idea for items is a very bad idea which will only do harm to 25-man guild organization.
01/23/2013 04:29 PMPosted by Phair
OT, but a quick question: What do you do on nights all 30-35 players are online and ready to raid?
90 Tauren Druid
01/23/2013 04:31 PMPosted by Zaxan

Have an understanding that people are benched on fights or rotated in on farm content, and that next week they'll get to go to x boss instead kinda arrangements.

The thunderforged 'solution' throws that right out of the window because noone will be willing to be sat even for farm content due to the possibility raiders will get a thunderforged item.
90 Troll Mage
01/23/2013 04:31 PMPosted by Zaxan

On that rare occasion we rotate players in and out, depending on what drops are needed and for compositional requirements of the encounter.
Edited by Phair on 1/23/2013 4:36 PM PST
90 Dwarf Shaman
What I don't understand is that with these new additions to the loot system, wouldn't 25 mans have greater access to them even without any additional drop rates? They're automatically 2.5x as likely to see one drop just based on the number of items that drop at a time. Why inflate that number even higher?
90 Human Warlock
On paper, it's a neat start.

In practice? It's not going to be enough. You're losing 25s to 10 mans because of loot, yes, but that's only a part of it.

The major thing you guys messed up was 10 and 25 having the same realm first titles they go for. It is logistically impossible to have 10s and 25s share the same difficulty. You're going to have fights in every tier, no matter what you try, that are going to be easier for one over the other. The only thing you hope for is you don't have enough in a row that are easier so a 10 man guild doesn't take it from a 25 man, or vice versa. Look at MSV for this, in how much easier fights are in there for 10 mans as opposed to 25, some even missing mechanics!

Here's the problem. It's harder to get 15 more like minded people for a raid, harder to have them work together and stay together in a guild setting. This is a fact, and it's not up for dispute. This translates into the fights themselves too though. Any fight in the game that has mechanics that require spreading out, are always going to give the edge to the 10 man group. Unless the 25 man version had a raid with more space, and a bigger boss/everything to compensate, that's just the way things are. Having 10 people spread out over 8 yards is a lot easier to coordinate than 25, and it's easier for these people to do this if there are no-man zones in the encounter as well. I don't know if you guys are just blind to this simple fact, or you don't think it's a big enough deal, but it matters, a LOT.

This is a step in the right direction. IN reality? You need to STOP having 10s and 25s competing for the same titles if only one can get it. Have separate ones, and make sure a guild that earns a 10 man server first is incapable of earning a 25 man one, so 25 man guilds don't go for both. It really is that simple.

I'm not sure that enough people read this as it hasn't been quoted in every post proceeding it, but you should probably read what I've quoted here if you just skipped through pages while reading responses.

10s and 25s are -not- the same raid encounters, no matter what you do to make them similar. They will always remain that: similar. Stop putting band-aids like randomized loot, token systems, upgrade systems, and things that raiders really don't care about. We raid because we want to raid, and people are going to raid what size they want. Some of us prefer the epicness of a large 25 man raid, and others prefer the close-knit form of 10 mans, or perhaps the easier management of people.

It's time to perform the surgery and separate the two completely, you went half way last expansion by intertwining the lockouts so we couldn't run both in the same week. Go the distance and separate the achievements for Realm First. Most fan websites, progression sites, etc already acknowledge that there's enough of a difference to separate the two in progression worldwide through filtering. End the bickering, because that's what it's always been about in the end. You're lumping two completely different systems together into the same category when they're CLEARLY different. The only thing 10s and 25s share is the name above the head of the monster we're killing.
90 Draenei Paladin
Add a Thunderforger that will do the upgrade for VP included on release of the patch, and then even though 25s will have the items drop more often, 10 man guilds can access the same gear with VP if they are unlucky.

Equality is there even if the path is slightly different. While the items may drop less frequently for 10s, they can at least work up to those items if they choose.

The guy could be a neutral Mogu or something along those lines.

I know your idea was to remove the upgrade guy... but it seems like this would be a logical solution without massive impact.
90 Blood Elf Mage
My server would be lucky to have a 25 man raiding guild. Several have tried to have 25 man raiding guilds and failed on my server. The horde are even outnumbered by the alliance, 1:3 at least on my server and the alliance guilds still are lucky to get 25 people for a raid at times it seems. Horde side, we pretty much can't have a 25 man raiding guild. Our last one that tried ended up disbanding. So the whole increased chance for this loot on 25 mans doesn't affect my server.

What I find interesting is that they are talking about declines in 25 man raiding, well there's a reason for that; some servers are dead or don't have very much of a player base so guilds can't do 25 man raids, like my server. This new loot thing won't help when there's not enough people lol.
1 Tauren Hunter
Two things:

First, my guild doesn't raid 25 man because of the logistical issues, but because of server population issues. This will not fix that.

Second, remove the shared lockout and I'd likely view this in a more favorable light.
90 Human Death Knight
01/23/2013 09:00 AMPosted by Crithto

You asked for my feedback, so here it is.

Stop giving incentive for one platform or the other. I could ramble a list of current perks and downsides of both 10 and 25 man but that will fall on bias'd deaf ears. What I will say is that WoW raiding is at the precipice of perfection in allowing both platforms a fair shot at completing content which affords every player in WoW the opportunity to raid in the platform of their choosing.

If players are opt'ing to play in 10 man raiding over 25 man, the last thing you should do is stand in the way of it because of a personal idealistic value created by development of a particular environment. Why don't you ask Jay Wilson how well it worked for him when he thought he could impose the development teams will on the player base of Diablo 3? Spoiler Alert: It didn't work and they eventually caved after sustaining a massive player base loss.

You can't fix the preference for 10 man over 25 man because it's not mechanics that cause players to prefer it. It's the social environment. Any mechanic you change will go against the grain of player preference which will undoubtedly cause a hemmoraging of players who feel they have to raid in a 25 man setting to be competitive but have no interest in doing so.

More players != More fun.

Helpful hint, players want everything they do to be fun with everyone they do it with.

TL;DR version - Don't oppose player preference. Force mechanics will do nothing but cost you subscriptions.
90 Tauren Druid
01/23/2013 04:52 PMPosted by Novahkane
More players != More fun.

I can also reverse that saying less players is not more fun, it's just the easiest way to do things. Remember that 10 mans are easier to maintain and it's a lot harder for 25s to recruit and retain a decent roster... so 25 mans die off.... there's no casual 25s anymore for this very reason which is killing off the lower end HM guilds which rely on people wanting to move from normal to HM.

25 man raiders tend to just quit when they have no options but to be forced into 10 man.... and 10 man is not fun,
90 Draenei Paladin




90 Human Death Knight
item upgrades are being taken out of the game in 5.2
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