Raid improvement following alt loot removal
NO1CARES --- You may skip this part if you're not interested in my personal story
(Please take note : This is not a bragging post, I come here sharing my thoughts based on my experience in retail vanilla and I've completed all raids before naxx, including cthun, and 8/14 naxx in a short time frame since the guild was created 1 month after serv transfer was allowed and aq40 was already open on many serv, but not the one we migrated to... Invictus / Ysera / US.. Yes we chose a pve serv in order to allow more french canadian to join the guild, but I come from stonemaul, a pvp serv, which is how I came to love world pvp .) Cthun kill 0:55 I'm "Dead gnome", I was never really good at listening to raid leaders... 1:02 I'm the gnome war up front. I wished I could find the whole version of this kill as it was our first kill and a good anecdote comes with it, but this is for another time.
As it is, I'm not quite sure if it's an april's fools or not, but if it is I've come to think that if retro's pve is to be prosperous end game wise, there must be a change, alt loot or not.
Right now, any class can do any raid. FACT.
Any group comp cannot kill any boss. Easily anyway.
Using some logic we will determine that all group comps are not viable for raiding. (Yes, to the elitists out there, any group comp can do anything, given you've got time. Time to gather the mats, or gold, for consummes, time to kill mobs and bosses slower, time to wipe on easy bosses because of atypical group comp, time to be a try hard.
I came to retro because when I saw the ad on the website with all the other private servers, retro stood out. Of all the servers retro was the only vanilla "fun" server. This meant a lot to me as I wanted to fall into the nostalgia that I had of the times I played vanilla, 10 years ago, but didn't want to have to give up my social life and other activities in order to raid. 
Among the things that dragged me here were "Instant 60" omg this is the best thing, as I hate leveling.
As well as "5m Raids". At first I thought it would be some easy tank and spank billshit and that I would end up pvping only, but as I discovered the mechanics I was overjoyed that I could finally go through all the raids that I loved to do when I was a teenager and that they were, even though not perfect, as close as it gets to a 40m raid tuned down to a 5m raid.

But I was lucky, because my favorties classes were always warrior, rogue and paladin. So I never had a hard time finding raids. At first people would tell me "your gear is too low" and tell me they wanted better geared players. Slowly I showed people I was worth more then my gear and could carry my own weight even though I was inexperienced. I could listen and learn strategies quickly as it was mostly tuned down raids that I had done (a long time ago, but strategies came back to mind quickly as I progressed through raids). BUT I was a warrior (I never speced prot before naxx, not kidding, but I raided retail the entire time as dps war and off tanking when necessary so I knew the class pretty well already), or a holy paladin (I never liked ret as I always thought it was a cheap version of arms war and I was accustomed to war) and a rogue, one of the best dps class in vanilla. So I never had a hard time finding raids for my 3 mains. 
As I started being geared, I also started to want to try new classes and learn more about their mechanics. But I didn't necessarily want to go through the pain of gearing all of them through raids or endless gold farming so I started alt looting. I was never a big fan of alt looting items that are not BiS, but I always hated to see a BiS go to waste because no one needed it in our small 5m group in a raid meant for 40 people, where there would always be someone who could have a use for it. 
-BTW You can learn to play any class if you use google, so being forced to raid with a specific class isn't the best way to improve because you may be forced to play the class to get gear, but this doesn't mean you will learn and improve when people try and give you tips on your class. I've tryed to tell people about class mechanics and how to improve their dps and overall skills and I've been told to mind my own business, because this is just a game and they can do as they want. Of course they can, but my point is that even though someone must use the char he wants to gear to raid, it doesn't mean that he wants to improve, or will.-

Now that I'm done with my little story...

Assuming that alt loot was disabled to make it "blizzlike", then naxx (as it is the only raid I see that cannot be completed by swaping group comp in order to complete it) must be reworked in order to make all classes, specs and group comps viable. 
Anyone who's been playing wow in retail knows that blizzard intended for raids to be epic and never wanted them to be centered around a specific group comp because it was 40m and at that point you would do with what you had.
So what I'm suggesting, following Smashbra's thread (Credits given - I'm such an ahole for encouraging drama, I know) is to leave pre naxx raids as they are, because I think that any comp can clear those without too much of a problem, BUT make Naxxramas 10m, as I see no way to make 5m work for all comps. AND this would make naxx some sort of "end game" raid that not everyone can do, but that any class can fit in. This would mean naxx would be retro's version of what naxx used to be on retail, an elitist raid that unfit people may venture into, but won't be able to complete unless improving their skills and working hard to get themselves ready for it. -Good thing they can buy gear with gold-

*Warning* Assumptions made of my own reasoning, which might be wrong *warning*
I can only assume this is what the devs wanted, to expand the variety of classes in pve and to force people to learn and play their class in order to obtain gear. I've come to understand those agreeing with the alt loot removal, which opinions can be found in my Dear Retro thread, in some way, but I believe that for retro pve's best interest, and according to the opinions of people in favor of alt loot removal, Naxx should be turned into a 10m raid so that all classes, regardless of their specs, may join the fight to banish the scourge from our holy lands, without fearing to be unfit for the task!
I would leave any other raids alone and would classify them as "retro dungeons", because back in the days, we had to do 5m dungeons (10m UBRS) in order to prepare ourselves for the challenges that were 40m raids and imho, it was fun! I would love for retro to make the old dungeons worth doing, but I will keep this for a new suggestion when I've got time to gather ideas to make it appealing to the community.

SO TLDR
Make naxx 10m raids in order to allow more classes and specs to be viable. This in turn would drive players toward learning new strategies and their class' mechanics in order to make their group comp work efficiently.

Thank you for your time.
Cant upvote this enough
if it requires too much time to dev i say no to that, they allready spent months and months scripting the pve
To make reduce maybe the skill players will need to play sham for instance in nax, you can maybe increase a little bit the % of herb spot to reduce the auction house prices.
If you reduce by 30% the prices of consumables for classes that have trouble in nax, you give those classes exactly what they need in order to clean nax almost as easy as an hpal or a rogue. Maybe even more advantages if you know your class.
So yea, making consumables a little bit more easy to get; it won't require anymore scripting and new code.
If it's easy to put 10 men raid, and change the boss for that new system, i'm all in favor for that tho; more diversity in raids is definitly great.
And i'm sure players will find solution to make those 10 men raid happen even with a low population; they ll start making guilds etc ...
Players always find a way when they need something
If the script required is long and require time, just make the consumables more easy to get and problem solved tho.
Maybe once the pvp content is improved and more worked on, spending time on 10 men could be nice. But again, if its not long to do, doing this now would be better.
If it's long, do it later is my opinion
()walenkryx Wrote: if it requires too much time to dev i say no to that, they allready spent months and months scripting the pve

It is actually fairly easily doable, raid size limit is more or less just changing a few numbers here and there, and there's a few lazy-tweaks that increase the damage/health of raid mobs/bosses by a %, bosses i believe need individual scaling which realistically can be number crunched and implemented within a few days, and tweaked over the course of months to really get the balanced right.
Quote:If you reduce by 30% the prices of consumables for classes that have trouble in nax, you give those classes exactly what they need in order to clean nax almost as easy as an hpal or a rogue. Maybe even more advantages if you know your class.
So yea, making consumables a little bit more easy to get; it won't require anymore scripting and new code.

Consumables are not the real issue, seeing as this buffs optimised groups too. Mark my words the only way people will gear "bad" classes is by boosting them with 4 good classes, and using double healer setups to carry weaker healers.
I do see the argument for cheaper consumables but realistically i levelled herb/alch to 300 and gathered a bunch of my own consumes within 2 days and have the tools required to gather more whenever i need them. The only reason people believe consumables warrant such a hefty price tag is because gold is so inflated here that it just seems easier to buy than farm your own. Which is not the case, people just need to stop being lazy.
Quote:If it's easy to put 10 men raid, and change the boss for that new system, i'm all in favor for that tho; more diversity in raids is definitly great.
And i'm sure players will find solution to make those 10 men raid happen even with a low population; they ll start making guilds etc ...
Players always find a way when they need something
If the script required is long and require time, just make the consumables more easy to get and problem solved tho.

10 man raids really would solve the alt-looting issue and imo it's not a huge ask. Maybe just make naxx 10man and the other content stays as 5 man to promote easier gearing up? It'd be great to see some hybrid classes actually being of use and not needing to log alts to buff your raid up outside of naxx. Perhaps even nightfall ret/enh??
Quote:Maybe once the pvp content is improved and more worked on, spending time on 10 men could be nice. But again, if its not long to do, doing this now would be better.

PVP content improved? Please elaborate on this one as at the moment pvp is basically as it was in retail, it's completely unbalanced. That's just how it was when people had t3, in blue 60 gear it's fairly decent as there's no 1-shots or dying in stun lock unless you're popping 3/5/10min cds to do so. In max gear there's simply no damage reduction for pvp in place to stop that (which is why blizzard developed resilience later). In order for pvp to be "improved" they'd have to make it largely unblizzlike and patch different classes/tweak scaling/implement a pvp damage reduction buff in BGs to stop the insane burst damage, which a lot of people won't like, despite it being more fun than a hunter getting a full aimed shot off followed by multi shot = 100% of your hp in 1 gcd essentially. Likewise with mages RNGing a crit frostbolt for 4k+. That's just vanilla.

Anyway, I really really support the idea for 10 man content, or at the very least 10 man naxx to allow people to have some diversity in their groups, not have to alt-log for raid buffs, not have the need to pay 1000-2000g per hybrid on consumables just to be "as good" as an optimised class.
The 10 man raid construct has so many merits, the only downside is the population currently, but i'm sure the playerbase would find work arounds or take guilds/pugs more seriously.
if you think vanilla pvp is garbage you are not the only one with that idea, but i'm also not th eonly with thinking vanilla pvp is great.
Just not in the 1v1 content like every other expansions, but in teamfight. In other expansion, 1v1 are balance and boring)okay, the teamfight are balance and boring too. In vanilla the 1v1 is unbalance fun when you rekt not fun when you get rekt, but the teamfight are balance and very challenging
When i talk about pvp content i'm not talking the actual spell and class mechanics, i'm talking about new kind of bg's and and find a way to make people in warsong play the flag way more. The only issue in warsong right now is that you have people that don't share the same desire to play the flag, and th emomen tyou have 2 or 3 of those players that only kill ennemies without carring about the flag, the warsong quickly become cancers.
So when i talk about new pvp content/system, i'm talking about how to improve the mindset of players to make warsong great with most of the players focusing on the flag. I've done some warsong sometimes, and when everyone communicate and play the objective, it's simply awesome.
How to make people focusing more on the flag ? You remove whats distracting them. Whats distracting them is that instant reward : Pvp tokens.
You remove that and theonly reward they ll see is the mark of warsong that will give them 1k gold. Now you ll have way more players in warsong communicating an dplaying the flag, for the simple reason that its the only way for them to wi more gold. It's just human nature : there is only one way to get gold, so lets try to improve that way = let's try to win the warsong = let's be more focus on the flag = lets communicate more = let's improve our skill ... So basically make the warsong great and challenging.
You can make the pvp token reward only in AV for instance, it will make people q AV and will make that bg very attractive.
That's 2 ideas : remove pvp token from warsong, and make it in AV. It creates so many good things such as challening bg's because much mor epeople will be focus on the objective, and it will make AV pop pretty often.
So that's the pvp content/ system i'm talking about, and that's why i think vanilla is great, it's great because you need to work as a team in order to win. Sure, 1v1 isnt balance and you can get 2 shot, but it's defintily worth it because playing as a team is what makes it great.
Regarding the 10 men raid, if it's quick to script then let'sz do this i think.
It will create a more social environment in retrowow because people will have to play with more people, maybe making guilds in order to raid ofte without taking too much time recruiting, creat emore diversity in raids, allow more spec/class to be viable such as sp with vampiric embrace
I can understand the want for improving the pvp reward system, as a lot of newer players don't even think about completing the pvp attunement quest to hand in WSG marks for 1k gold. If they did or they were made aware of it then there would be an incentive to complete objectives. I think the quests need rewording so that they show you the 1k gold reward clearly when you accept the quest so you know what you're getting ahead of time. I also believe both attunement quests should start in your quest log when you load in to the server (as a lot of newer players don't even know they exist).
But these are off-topic issues.
On-topic however, I'd love to hear from a GM as to -WHY- they implemented the alt-looting change with no other ways to work in the "bad" classes to naxx in place. It may have been purely to test the waters and see how the server would react and if it was positive it'd stay and if it was negative it would go. But as april fools is over and it's still in place I guess it's here to stay, so all I can ask is "What is the reasoning".
What is the incentive to play a T3 geared warrior tank (most of the tanks who run naxx at the moment are fully bis). What's in it for them to run a 2hr~ naxx with no opportunity to get any upgrades. 60%+ of the runs are pugs, most of which would disappear. Getting a geared tank will be increasingly difficult as those players will have to go on other classes to gear them up as there's no alt looting.
Unfortunately 10 man raiding will not solve that problem. Regardless, if alt-looting is here to stay I believe 10 man content is a big step in the right direction to solving raid diversity and being able to actually attain naxx loot on classes outside of the main 5.
-- the only reason i can see is to force those classes to pay 20k gold per piece from the vendor, increasing the income of donations. Which imo is a potentially server-killing idea. Hopefully this was not your thought process.
I dont think making the 10 mark wsg quest more visible would really help people realizing that playing the flag is more important, it could help tho. Removing pvp tokens seems like one of the thing to be done in order to make players play the flag in a way more efficient way tho.
Regarding your argument about alt looting disable is a bad idea now : a bis tank won't raid naxx anymore since he cannot gear his alt. So that's an issue, i aggree with you on that point.
But that scenario will only occur in the first weeks, maybe 2 first month. After a while, you won't see those bis war on the server as the population always change and new players always come. So you will have t3 tank not bis, that will always need that kt item, or that caster that will always need that mh on maexna, or priest that will need that sp hat etc etc ...
My point is, after some time, you won't have bis players anymore, that's why you will always find a tank or any other class to raid : because they will most of the time need that 1 item that they dont have.
But in the first weeks, the bis people won't raid because they dont have alt loot.
But that's only a short term issue, that will be solve by time, for new players always join retrowow and those new players will always need an item.
And btw, i'm saying its a short term issue for the sake of the argument, i truly believe players simply complain and act like it's a terrible thing, but i'm sure most of them will simply rerol and spend some time on the char they want to gear.
I'm sure most players that complain will simply adapt.
If they don't, its a short term issue that will be solved anyway, solved by new waves of players that need gear
I apologise if it sounded as if i'm talking about no alt-looting being a bad idea, as I do actually like the idea, but it shouldn't be implemented on its own. It needs to be patched in with a larger patch to improve raiding quality of life so that people are actually able to play their shamans, priests, hunters, druids etc instead of having to just sit them idle until a way of working those classes into Naxx is available.
Essentially all removing alt-looting does is stop progression of anyone playing a hybrid, but doesn't affect anybody playing one of the original naxx classes. Simply put the change should've been implemented in combination with 10 man raiding, hybrid buffs or naxx tweaks to allow people to actually continue playing those classes in the transition period instead of putting a hard-stopper on those players and not affecting "main" class players.
It seems an unfortunate way for this server-altering change to be implemented, with little to no foresight on how it will work in the future for those weaker classes.
I am still all for diversity in naxx however, but realistically 5 man just doesn't allow for it, some bosses just need too much dps, or certain dispels etc which a 5 man pure random class pug just doesn't have.
Okay here is the main things we talked about :
I / Disable alt looting is good overal, but it creates an issue ...
II / Some classes will have a hard time doing nax and won't be accepted in raid
III / In order to fix that issue, we need either :
- Small boss mechanic changed to make those classes almost as much viable as the usual comp
- Make 10 men and rewrite some code of some bosses, and increasong the hp of all bosses.
I personally don't believe at all that the II / will happen in the long term. I believe that after a month or 2, every classes will have a decent amounf of chance of being taken in a nax raid and thats simple probability :
1 priest at some point will want his gear, no matter what other people think. All it takes is one priest.
He will run nax and show his raid that it is doable : now you have 4 people that believe in priest in nax
That priest will run nax again 2 days after with different mates and show them its doable as a priest : 4 more players will become aware thats priest cn do nax.
You have 8 players aware that priest can nax in 4 days, in a human society people talk, and it becomes exponential and more and more people become aware that priest can raid in nax.
Same works fo shamans. All it takes is 1 shaman.
Now overal, i believe that time will solve everything, we only thing that the usual comp is th eonly way to go because we have been playing it since the begining.
For new players, it means nothing; and if they need gear on their char, they will just raid with whatever they can.
Will there be more wipes with priest and sham ? Sure.
In the short term.
After some time, people will know what to do and how to do it.
Just give people some time, and everything will just come naturally :  getting bis gear in vanilla in a month is what attract players on retrowow, and its not few tricks to learn as a priest or as a sham that will stop them from getting that gear.
Now maybe some bosses can be change a little bit to reduce the skill lvl required. I believe in players to learn tricks and improve their gameplay, but if there are 2 or 3 bosses that require too much consumables or try hard, it should be fix.
But now its time to be specific and talk about what boss and how to change it for that class.
What comes in mind right now is indeed maexna for priest, how to maek this less hard for that class
Thaddius for hunters, find a way to increase hunter s dps (give thaddius a nature weakness so serpent sting deals 100% more damage ?)
So yea, there might be few changes to be done here and there, but no more imo.
And 10 men raid is great, no doubt about it. But it its more than a month to script, lets do it later i'd say.
The issue isn't just that some of it is completely impossible sunqt, it's the fact that "why take a shadow priest, when a warlock wants to go". Warlocks bring summons, soulstones, more damage, infinite mana as well as aoe damage. It's not that it's impossible with a shadow priest, but why would you take one if you can do it far easier with a warlock. The change doesn't stop people playing the 5 "good" classes. It just makes it even more difficult to get any gear on bad ones.
Same as in retail, why take someones who's 840 ilvl, if an 890 ilvl wants an invite. Why take a druid tank if a warrior tank wants to go. Why take a ret pala if a fury warr or rogue wants to go, people will still take 3-4 of the "best" classes +1 hybrid (at best). It still minimises the amount of gear the hybrids get, but doesn't stop the diversity issue.
Pugs are pugs, they want the smoothest easiest clear, so they will naturally take players who only need +1-2 items to get bis, but are otherwise full t3. It's also more than likely they will aim to get a mage/warlock/rogue dps setup, along with a warrior tank. This is the crux of the 5 man system as it is with no alt-looting. Pugs will take the best groups + themselves as the hybrid slot (if they take any at all) because it's easier.
 




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