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Should max raid difficulty be as hard as wow mythic raiding?

MarzzoMarzzo Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited April 2021 in General Discussion
Ashes of Creation will have dynamic difficulty. That means the difficulty will scale depending on how well your raid performs. The better you perform a boss in the raid, the harder next bosses will be and thus awarding better loot for completing the extra challange.

In world of warcraft, you can choose between normal, heroic and mythic. About 50% of the community complete normal, about 10-15% complete heroic and 1% manage to complete mythic.

I wondered, do you think highest difficulty in AoC should be similar to world of warcraft? Or should it be harder/easier? For reference, Ill link a 5 minute boss strategy video for the second boss in the current raid on mythic difficulty.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dLq7OJm4GXQ&ab_channel=LimitGuild

How do you feel about this amount of mechanics for a boss fight? Is it too much? Does it feel to complicated? Or is it just right? Note, that a majority of the mechanics from "heroic" mode are still here, and are being ignored in the video. There are about 2x as many mechanics in total in addition to everything in the video.


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Comments

  • Marzzo wrote: »
    Ashes of Creation will have dynamic difficulty. That means the difficulty will scale depending on how well your raid performs. The better you perform a boss in the raid, the harder next bosses will be and thus awarding better loot for completing the extra challange.

    In world of warcraft, you can choose between normal, heroic and mythic. About 50% of the community complete normal, about 10-15% complete heroic and 1% manage to complete mythic.

    I wondered, do you think highest difficulty in AoC should be similar to world of warcraft? Or should it be harder/easier? For reference, Ill link a 5 minute boss strategy video for the second boss in the current raid on mythic difficulty.

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=dLq7OJm4GXQ&ab_channel=LimitGuild

    How do you feel about this amount of mechanics for a boss fight? Is it too much? Does it feel to complicated? Or is it just right? Note, that a majority of the mechanics from "heroic" mode are still here, and are being ignored in the video. There are about 2x as many mechanics in total in addition to everything in the video.


    I don't think raid bosses can be that complex from mechanical stand point since some difficulty will also come from boss's behaviour being randomized to some extent and also players not having addons with timers, range checking etc.

    I also think that range of difficulties in wow is bit too wide. You didn't even mention LFR, but even normal is pretty easy for semi organized group of people that at least read a boss guide. Compared to wow, I think overall difficulty should start somewhere between normal and heroic. I believe killing any raid boss even on the lowest difficulty should mean something for ordinary let's say semi-casual guild so you don't want to push the difficulty that low. As to where it should peak, it doesn't really concern me anyway, but I don't really see any reason why it shouldn't be as challenging as possible so even the best players have something to strive for.
  • KhronusKhronus Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    If the content is too easy, the game will die. Raids should be a challenge to memorize content and couple muscle memory with critical thinking/decision making. I am really looking forward to organizing my guild during raids to take on any challenge that comes before us (including other guilds thinking they can square up!).

    As for the difficulty of mythic raids. At one point I was unable to compete with my group because we lacked a very specific healer and there were ZERO on the server that were good enough. We were forced to recruit from other servers and at this point it became a second job so we decided to just quit. Difficult because some classes at the time just aren't good enough or because stacking the same healer doesn't help is terrible. We want difficult content because of intelligent game design and a unique approach to each boss.

    I agree that difficulties are too wide in WOW. They began to cater to players from all walks of life in order to maximize subscriptions. The all mighty investor is god with Activision. Current wow should never be compared to any new game. Vanilla to BC WOW should definitely be compared as THAT is what ushered them into a world wide example of what was greatness. This is why they are now back tracking and bringing back old content.
  • Yes please add difficult raids with diverse/complex mechanics! These serve a much wider purpose than just for keeping 'elite' players engaged imo.
    Long term progression is vital to creating a sense of guild community, if players can just one-shot dungeons they will form random impersonal pickup groups to farm the content. When progression happens over weeks it forces guilds to practice together, communicate and get to know each other, setup periodic raids, and eventually get the feeling of success/reward when they accomplish what they set out for. This is a more satisfying/less grindy way to approach content imo. (can't speak for WoW mythic, but I did raid in Rift and I liked that complexity)
  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Well, I doubt we'll get fights as complex as the ones in WoW simply because the Ashes raids are 40-man, not 20. Typically the more players you add into the mix, the less complex you have to make the encounter. Also, WoW mythic raids are only possible because of the huge amount of addons, macros and third party tools the players have access to. Take those tools away and the fights would be impossible to beat, no matter how good you are or how much time you spend on it.

    So no, in a direct comparison Ashes raids will never be as complex as WoW mythic raids. That doesn't necessarily mean they will be easier of course, just less complex with fewer mechanics too deal with.
    volunteer_moderator.gif
  • uaouao Member, Braver of Worlds, Alpha One
    I wouldnt mind if there are bosses that are impossible to beat. Until maybe months/years later you get new content upgrades with gear strong enough that may make it barely possible.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    I think this is a far more complex question than it seems.

    There are some factors that need to be taken in to account - factors we all know.

    Open world raiding in a PvP setting will make even trivial encounters impossible at times.

    Action combat doesn't lend itself well to complex encounters, even if only generally speaking.

    No combat tracker means players are unable to deal with as much at the same time.

    Now, when you take all of that in, the thing that becomes obvious that raid encounters in Ashes will be a shadow of even WoW raid encounters.

    That brings us to the next point - who is going to be killing them?

    People that consider raiding their primary source of enjoyment in an MMO wont come to Ashes. Killing a mob that should be dead easy but is made hard due to a lack of tools being made available is not rewarding. As such, people that are able to kill those more complex encounters are likely to stay in games where they can kill those more complex encounters, and gather some satisfaction from doing so.

    People that want to be killing those encounters but aren't quite there yet are also likely to stay in games that have the content they know they find rewarding.

    This means the 10-15% of players that are killing heroic raids (and mythic), as well as similar people from other games, are not likely to play Ashes.

    This means the top end raiders in Ashes are likely to be on par with people in WoW that are able to kill normal raids, but not heroic raids.

    Now, take the average player that fits in to that group, take away all forms of objective information on an encounter, require a slightly larger portion of their atte tion be spent on the action combat aspect of their build instead of the encounter, and then throw in an opposing raid force trying to stop then.

    Picture the encounters that are possible for this group of people to kill in this situation.

    That is Ashes top end raiding.
  • bloodprophetbloodprophet Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Is super funny to see so many people that need crutches to do "hard" content.

    Don't need crutches as yes I think some of the instanced raids could and should be more complex. Paying attention to what your doing and not to what some addon is telling you to do you can accomplish a lot more then you think.
    Most people never listen. They are just waiting on you to quit making noise so they can.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    edited April 2021
    Is super funny to see so many people that need crutches to do "hard" content.

    Don't need crutches as yes I think some of the instanced raids could and should be more complex. Paying attention to what your doing and not to what some addon is telling you to do you can accomplish a lot more then you think.

    Most raids in games like EQ, EQ2, WoW, Rift etc are designed under the assumption that the raid is using a combat tracker of some sort. The top end raids in those games are literally not possible unless at least a few key people in the raid are running them. *YOU* don't need to run them, but someone does.

    They are less crutches, more like legs.
  • LeonerdoLeonerdo Member
    edited April 2021
    I don't think anyone is going to disagree that there should be multiple levels of difficulty. You can't expect new players (even ones who have played other MMOs) to just jump into heroic raids. And you can't expect veterans to stick around longer than a year or two if everything is just steam-roll, PUG-able dungeons.

    (Edit: I got side-tracked talking about PvE content in general, not just raids. Anything "low end" would probably not include raids at all. Except maybe a 16-man, introductory, tank-and-spank raid.)

    At the low end: Easy, hand-holding content should exist to help bring new players in and teach them, and get them to the point of participating in regular content. Realistically though, any training-wheels content will be ignored by most players, or will only be done once. So it's a major cost for marginal gains in terms of on-boarding. Of course, Ashes of Creation should attempt to recruit more newbies to the game, and the genre, but likely it won't be a priority for a few years. (Unlike FFXIV for example, which intended to be a lot of console-players' first introduction to MMOs.)

    In the middle: I think it's not just acceptable, but crucial, that the majority of content in the game is casual (but not brain-dead). Players exist on a bell-curve of skill/investment, and like it or not, the center of that curve is not hard-core at all. They may put thousands of hours into the game, but it's not in the pursuit of being the best and tackling the hardest content. Millions of MMO players are perfectly happy just playing through the story, spending a couple hours beating the new raid on the easiest difficulty, and then spending most of their time crafting, leveling alts, pugging old dungeons, socializing, and taking care of a house. Ashes has to cater to that majority.

    But also, like, hard-core players don't have to be progging mythic 100% of the time. They can enjoy grinding casual content too, as long as it's not at a "learning" pace with a PUG full of new players. Unless mentoring is your jam, that's cool too.

    Edit: For this I would say the WoW equivalent is LFR to start, with occasional Normal raids. The difficulty is just getting a big enough group together to run it consistently. It would be a smidgen too frustrating for casual players (with casual guilds, less time available, and less ambition) if they spent half their time getting a group together, only to fail the raid more often than not.

    At the top end: Obviously, there has to be really hard stuff to strive for, and for people to spend 100s of hours working towards. Ashes is an MMO made by MMO veterans, for MMO veterans and enthusiasts. Where should the difficulty come from though?

    I'm concerned that the hardest raids will only be hard because they take a ton of organization, and because you have to PvP for control of them, while the PvE part is just tank-and-spank for a long time. Not that organization and PvP shouldn't be a part of it; I just think those should be preliminary steps, not the focus. Once you get into them, the actual raids should be primarily PvE challenges, similar in difficulty to Heroic raids from WoW, or Savage raids from FFXIV.

    I think puzzle mechanics should be minimized though. After the first ~6 months, most raids will have been unlocked, solved, and documented in guides from one server or another. Each server will only get to be "world-first" for a couple of raids, and then everything unlocked after will have guides. And since access to raids is limited, there's no way you're going to ignore those guides when you get your chance at them. So the difficulty in raids has to come from awareness and execution, rather than understanding cryptic mechanics.

    I dunno if there needs to be any raids as hard as Mythic/Ultimate/"1%" raids. There's enough other stuff in Ashes to do, and enough other restrictions on raids that I don't think they need to be that super-difficult to keep veterans engaged in the game.

    Edit: Please don't turn this into another discussion about combat trackers. Keep your language vague if you have to. if someone says, "They should be really hard, like WoW raids", let's assume everyone is doing the mental math to subtract addons from the equation. We really don't need a reminder about it every three comments.
  • bloodprophetbloodprophet Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Noaani wrote: »
    Is super funny to see so many people that need crutches to do "hard" content.

    Don't need crutches as yes I think some of the instanced raids could and should be more complex. Paying attention to what your doing and not to what some addon is telling you to do you can accomplish a lot more then you think.

    Most raids in games like EQ, EQ2, WoW, Rift etc are designed under the assumption that the raid is using a combat tracker of some sort. The top end raids in those games are literally not possible unless at least a few key people in the raid are running them. *YOU* don't need to run them, but someone does.

    They are less crutches, more like legs.

    These are definitely do able with out them. Just because people got used to using them does not make them less of a crutch. I have confidence that we could figure it out even if most people can't even when using them.
    They are not needed just a nicety.
    Most people never listen. They are just waiting on you to quit making noise so they can.
  • VhaeyneVhaeyne Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    @Marzzo

    I have stated my opinion on this many times on here so I will try to keep it friendly and brief.

    You can not have that level of detail and complexity in mechanics in a game like ashes because the raids take place in the open world and the DEVs will have less control over expected gear scores and build effectiveness. Those raids work because they happen in the vacuum of instances where the DEVs have a clear grasp on the numbers involved in the raids. The builds are more tightly controlled by the DEVs, the gears relative power is more controlled, and the number of players that can be present is fixed.

    Imagine if 60-120 people could show up to the boss in that video. it just would not be the challenge it is. Even if it was no group could progress the fight because they would be too busy fighting multiple guilds for the right to fight the boss. It would just be absolute chaos.

    To put raids back in instances would go against the competitive open world PvX vision of the game and devalue open world raiding. We just can't have both. Ashes picked open world raids. It is not my favorite type of raiding, but it is the best type of raiding for a open world PvX game.
    TVMenSP.png
    If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
  • MarzzoMarzzo Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    edited April 2021
    Vhaeyne wrote: »
    @Marzzo

    I have stated my opinion on this many times on here so I will try to keep it friendly and brief.

    You can not have that level of detail and complexity in mechanics in a game like ashes because the raids take place in the open world and the DEVs will have less control over expected gear scores and build effectiveness. Those raids work because they happen in the vacuum of instances where the DEVs have a clear grasp on the numbers involved in the raids. The builds are more tightly controlled by the DEVs, the gears relative power is more controlled, and the number of players that can be present is fixed.

    Imagine if 60-120 people could show up to the boss in that video. it just would not be the challenge it is. Even if it was no group could progress the fight because they would be too busy fighting multiple guilds for the right to fight the boss. It would just be absolute chaos.

    To put raids back in instances would go against the competitive open world PvX vision of the game and devalue open world raiding. We just can't have both. Ashes picked open world raids. It is not my favorite type of raiding, but it is the best type of raiding for a open world PvX game.

    While open world content is a majority of AoC, steven said 20% will be instanced content. Obviously, this 20% content will in some regard be hard dungeons and raids. This is what im talking
  • SaeduSaedu Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Daerax wrote: »
    I also think that range of difficulties in wow is bit too wide. You didn't even mention LFR, but even normal is pretty easy for semi organized group of people that at least read a boss guide.

    LFR is an abomination to all gaming. Not just MMOs. I personally would not consider it "raiding" as it takes away most of the core aspects of raiding:

    1) the need to do mechanics
    2) the need to understand what is happening in the fight
    3) the need to put together a viable group
    4) the need to have any sort of plan/organization
  • SaeduSaedu Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Marzzo wrote: »
    In world of warcraft, you can choose between normal, heroic and mythic. About 50% of the community complete normal, about 10-15% complete heroic and 1% manage to complete mythic.

    How do you feel about this amount of mechanics for a boss fight? Is it too much? Does it feel to complicated? Or is it just right? Note, that a majority of the mechanics from "heroic" mode are still here, and are being ignored in the video. There are about 2x as many mechanics in total in addition to everything in the video.

    I assume this is for instanced raids, not world bosses.

    I'd consider this to be about right for instanced content:
    40% (maybe 50%) completing Normal (and this should be the lowest difficulty).
    About 15-20% completing Heroic
    About 5% completing Mythic (but keep track of how soon its completed so their can be competitions like world first, server first, first 100, etc).

    World bosses should probably have higher completion rates (if they are low, thats less of an indicator of player skill and more of an indicator of the player community not forming up well). Can you even have different categories of a open world boss difficulty? Sure it can scale up based on the number of players around, but those players may be more of a factor of difficulty than the boss. This will also be impacted by the spawn frequency of a boss. If its a single boss once a week, then its going to be a very small % that kill it as the top guilds will just spawn camp and monopolize the kill.
  • MarzzoMarzzo Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Saedu wrote: »
    Marzzo wrote: »
    In world of warcraft, you can choose between normal, heroic and mythic. About 50% of the community complete normal, about 10-15% complete heroic and 1% manage to complete mythic.

    How do you feel about this amount of mechanics for a boss fight? Is it too much? Does it feel to complicated? Or is it just right? Note, that a majority of the mechanics from "heroic" mode are still here, and are being ignored in the video. There are about 2x as many mechanics in total in addition to everything in the video.

    I assume this is for instanced raids, not world bosses.

    I'd consider this to be about right for instanced content:
    40% (maybe 50%) completing Normal (and this should be the lowest difficulty).
    About 15-20% completing Heroic
    About 5% completing Mythic (but keep track of how soon its completed so their can be competitions like world first, server first, first 100, etc).

    World bosses should probably have higher completion rates (if they are low, thats less of an indicator of player skill and more of an indicator of the player community not forming up well). Can you even have different categories of a open world boss difficulty? Sure it can scale up based on the number of players around, but those players may be more of a factor of difficulty than the boss. This will also be impacted by the spawn frequency of a boss. If its a single boss once a week, then its going to be a very small % that kill it as the top guilds will just spawn camp and monopolize the kill.

    In world of warcraft, world bosses are just normal quest mobs with extra health. They are irrelevant.
  • SaeduSaedu Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    @Wandering Mist I agree the raid size will necessitate easier encounters. Also the lack of addons will require easier encounters. However, this is all relative if you are measuring success based on % of players that kill a boss/clear a raid.

    @Noaani, yea I agree with what you're saying here. This won't be as competitive/difficult of a raiding game as other MMOs. I think that's okay. The end game is more about the nodes/sieges. Raids and world bosses are probably more of a means to the end (i.e. a way to get better gear so you can better help out in the node stuff). It reminds me of DAoC where you would occasionally do the raid, but the focus was world PvP, castle sieges, etc.

    @bloodprophet, when's the last time you raided in WoW? The mythic content is significantly harder now than anything back in Vanilla WoW if you look at it from a pure mechanics/execution perspective (finding 40 people who were able to play their class was the hardest part of raiding in Vanilla WoW). Things are way more complex. NOBODY... 0%.. clear mythic raids without addons. Please, show me a single Mythic raider from the past few expansions who never uses addons. Every mythic raid leader will have mandatory addons for his/her raid and the game is balanced around this.
  • It should not, and I would also hope the game wont be the type that attracts the mythic raider types. If you are into that level of difficulty, or that type of raiding, take the hint and play WoW, not AoC.
  • SaeduSaedu Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Cataphract wrote: »
    It should not, and I would also hope the game wont be the type that attracts the mythic raider types. If you are into that level of difficulty, or that type of raiding, take the hint and play WoW, not AoC.

    But WoW doesn't have nodes! I sure hope AoC has challenging content. Challenge however is relative to the tools you have available. A former WoW raider could come to AoC and still find it challenging if things are done right, its just different types of challenges.
  • bloodprophetbloodprophet Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Saedu wrote: »
    @Wandering Mist I agree the raid size will necessitate easier encounters. Also the lack of addons will require easier encounters. However, this is all relative if you are measuring success based on % of players that kill a boss/clear a raid.

    @Noaani, yea I agree with what you're saying here. This won't be as competitive/difficult of a raiding game as other MMOs. I think that's okay. The end game is more about the nodes/sieges. Raids and world bosses are probably more of a means to the end (i.e. a way to get better gear so you can better help out in the node stuff). It reminds me of DAoC where you would occasionally do the raid, but the focus was world PvP, castle sieges, etc.

    @bloodprophet, when's the last time you raided in WoW? The mythic content is significantly harder now than anything back in Vanilla WoW if you look at it from a pure mechanics/execution perspective (finding 40 people who were able to play their class was the hardest part of raiding in Vanilla WoW). Things are way more complex. NOBODY... 0%.. clear mythic raids without addons. Please, show me a single Mythic raider from the past few expansions who never uses addons. Every mythic raid leader will have mandatory addons for his/her raid and the game is balanced around this.

    !8 months ago. My guild fell apart after G"huun. Big drama as a melee player got CC'd 7 times in a row by Mythrax and try hards failed to understand why his DPS was low. (I haven't played retail since that night)
    Your right they have gotten much better mechanicly and much much harder. Which is a good thing.
    Saying everyone does and actually Having to are two different things. I believe that it is not needed people will figure it out. Not everyone but not everyone needs to. Addons make it easier and just because the DEv's over there are lazy and expect you to go to a third party site to download stuff to play their game don't it is good design. Jeff and many others at Intrepid have lots of experience and I think they will find a good balance without expecting the players to do their jobs for them.
    Most people never listen. They are just waiting on you to quit making noise so they can.
  • VhaeyneVhaeyne Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Marzzo wrote: »
    While open world content is a majority of AoC, steven said 20% will be instanced content. Obviously, this 20% content will in some regard be hard dungeons and raids. This is what im talking

    It likely wont. When Steven put that 20% number out there he said that some story related content might need the isolation and control granted from instances. Seeing that instanced raids goes against the PvX design of the game I don't think we will see any instanced raids.
    TVMenSP.png
    If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Saedu wrote: »
    @Wandering Mist I agree the raid size will necessitate easier encounters. Also the lack of addons will require easier encounters. However, this is all relative if you are measuring success based on % of players that kill a boss/clear a raid.

    @Noaani, yea I agree with what you're saying here. This won't be as competitive/difficult of a raiding game as other MMOs. I think that's okay. The end game is more about the nodes/sieges. Raids and world bosses are probably more of a means to the end (i.e. a way to get better gear so you can better help out in the node stuff). It reminds me of DAoC where you would occasionally do the raid, but the focus was world PvP, castle sieges, etc.

    @bloodprophet, when's the last time you raided in WoW? The mythic content is significantly harder now than anything back in Vanilla WoW if you look at it from a pure mechanics/execution perspective (finding 40 people who were able to play their class was the hardest part of raiding in Vanilla WoW). Things are way more complex. NOBODY... 0%.. clear mythic raids without addons. Please, show me a single Mythic raider from the past few expansions who never uses addons. Every mythic raid leader will have mandatory addons for his/her raid and the game is balanced around this.

    !8 months ago. My guild fell apart after G"huun. Big drama as a melee player got CC'd 7 times in a row by Mythrax and try hards failed to understand why his DPS was low. (I haven't played retail since that night)
    I can see how that would be an issue, and how it would color someone's opinion on combat trackers, but I honestly have never come across this situation.

    The main reason is, everyone in my raid knows the mechanics of the fight, and what it means for the various classes. If there is a DPS that is usually fairly good, and they are low on a fight with CC like that, everyone would know that his DPS was low due to CC.

    This is one of those times when people are blaming a combat tracker (not that you specifically did), when really the fault lies with the people present.
    Your right they have gotten much better mechanicly and much much harder. Which is a good thing.
    Saying everyone does and actually Having to are two different things. I believe that it is not needed people will figure it out. Not everyone but not everyone needs to. Addons make it easier and just because the DEv's over there are lazy and expect you to go to a third party site to download stuff to play their game don't it is good design. Jeff and many others at Intrepid have lots of experience and I think they will find a good balance without expecting the players to do their jobs for them.
    I agree with the notion of needing third party addons as being not ideal, but the only viable solution to that is to build that functionality in to the game itself.

    It absolutely is possible to develop raid content without combat trackers being required, thing is, those encounters will be dumped down from what they could otherwise be. So when Intrepid develop encounters under the false assumption that we dont have combat trackers working, those encounters will be fair less complex than if they developed encounters with the correct assumption in place.

    I also want to clarify what I mean by combat trackers are needed.

    Many encounters have aspects that are only able to be understood by looking at the logs of the fight. There are a number of reasons for this.

    While it is possible to spend several dozen hours going through your logs to identify these aspects of an encounter without a combat tracker, a combat tracker does nothing more than rearrange that same information.

    So, in saying a combat tracker is needed, what we are saying is that examining combat logs is needed, and a combat tracker takes that task from dozens of hours down to just hours.

    This is why I don't understand people arguing against combat trackers, they are just a reorganization of information.
  • SaeduSaedu Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited April 2021
    +1 for everything @Noaani just posted. Spot on.

    I would add one other thing. It isn't just the combat trackers that allows Blizzard to make more difficult content, but also the boss timer mods (like deadly boss mods or big wigs). It just isn't humanly possible to be tracking all of the things that can happen on a typical WoW boss at the moment without an addon to manage multiple timers. A class like a disc priest's healing will vary by more than 50% based on knowing or not knowing when the damage is coming out. They need close to 20 seconds prep time to get all of their pre-spells out with the spirit shell build to be ready for the big damage spike. (it isn't a good design per say, just speaks to the complexity of everything going on in the raids an the need to track it all in real time).

    @bloodprophet, when your friend got CCed 7 times in the boss fight, was anyone looking at the CC taken combat tracker? Too many people just look at DPS and healing meters and don't take advantage of the wealth of other info available in the trackers.
  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Noaani wrote: »
    Saedu wrote: »
    @Wandering Mist I agree the raid size will necessitate easier encounters. Also the lack of addons will require easier encounters. However, this is all relative if you are measuring success based on % of players that kill a boss/clear a raid.

    @Noaani, yea I agree with what you're saying here. This won't be as competitive/difficult of a raiding game as other MMOs. I think that's okay. The end game is more about the nodes/sieges. Raids and world bosses are probably more of a means to the end (i.e. a way to get better gear so you can better help out in the node stuff). It reminds me of DAoC where you would occasionally do the raid, but the focus was world PvP, castle sieges, etc.

    @bloodprophet, when's the last time you raided in WoW? The mythic content is significantly harder now than anything back in Vanilla WoW if you look at it from a pure mechanics/execution perspective (finding 40 people who were able to play their class was the hardest part of raiding in Vanilla WoW). Things are way more complex. NOBODY... 0%.. clear mythic raids without addons. Please, show me a single Mythic raider from the past few expansions who never uses addons. Every mythic raid leader will have mandatory addons for his/her raid and the game is balanced around this.

    !8 months ago. My guild fell apart after G"huun. Big drama as a melee player got CC'd 7 times in a row by Mythrax and try hards failed to understand why his DPS was low. (I haven't played retail since that night)
    I can see how that would be an issue, and how it would color someone's opinion on combat trackers, but I honestly have never come across this situation.

    The main reason is, everyone in my raid knows the mechanics of the fight, and what it means for the various classes. If there is a DPS that is usually fairly good, and they are low on a fight with CC like that, everyone would know that his DPS was low due to CC.

    This is one of those times when people are blaming a combat tracker (not that you specifically did), when really the fault lies with the people present.
    Your right they have gotten much better mechanicly and much much harder. Which is a good thing.
    Saying everyone does and actually Having to are two different things. I believe that it is not needed people will figure it out. Not everyone but not everyone needs to. Addons make it easier and just because the DEv's over there are lazy and expect you to go to a third party site to download stuff to play their game don't it is good design. Jeff and many others at Intrepid have lots of experience and I think they will find a good balance without expecting the players to do their jobs for them.
    I agree with the notion of needing third party addons as being not ideal, but the only viable solution to that is to build that functionality in to the game itself.

    It absolutely is possible to develop raid content without combat trackers being required, thing is, those encounters will be dumped down from what they could otherwise be. So when Intrepid develop encounters under the false assumption that we dont have combat trackers working, those encounters will be fair less complex than if they developed encounters with the correct assumption in place.

    I also want to clarify what I mean by combat trackers are needed.

    Many encounters have aspects that are only able to be understood by looking at the logs of the fight. There are a number of reasons for this.

    While it is possible to spend several dozen hours going through your logs to identify these aspects of an encounter without a combat tracker, a combat tracker does nothing more than rearrange that same information.

    So, in saying a combat tracker is needed, what we are saying is that examining combat logs is needed, and a combat tracker takes that task from dozens of hours down to just hours.

    This is why I don't understand people arguing against combat trackers, they are just a reorganization of information.

    It's not just the combat trackers though. It's also the boss mods and macros on top it all. The last WoW raid boss I did back in BFA was G'huun and OMG it was insane how much stuff was going on in that fight. Just for anyone who didn't do it, the mythic version of the boss required guilds to use custom-built communication macros and warning scripts JUST FOR THAT BOSS because of how tight the timing was on certain mechanics.

    Like I said before, if you take those things away the fight becomes impossible. And that's the thing about WoW raids, they are specifically designed around the use of these addons which is why they are so complex and tightly tuned.
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  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Noaani wrote: »
    Saedu wrote: »
    @Wandering Mist I agree the raid size will necessitate easier encounters. Also the lack of addons will require easier encounters. However, this is all relative if you are measuring success based on % of players that kill a boss/clear a raid.

    @Noaani, yea I agree with what you're saying here. This won't be as competitive/difficult of a raiding game as other MMOs. I think that's okay. The end game is more about the nodes/sieges. Raids and world bosses are probably more of a means to the end (i.e. a way to get better gear so you can better help out in the node stuff). It reminds me of DAoC where you would occasionally do the raid, but the focus was world PvP, castle sieges, etc.

    @bloodprophet, when's the last time you raided in WoW? The mythic content is significantly harder now than anything back in Vanilla WoW if you look at it from a pure mechanics/execution perspective (finding 40 people who were able to play their class was the hardest part of raiding in Vanilla WoW). Things are way more complex. NOBODY... 0%.. clear mythic raids without addons. Please, show me a single Mythic raider from the past few expansions who never uses addons. Every mythic raid leader will have mandatory addons for his/her raid and the game is balanced around this.

    !8 months ago. My guild fell apart after G"huun. Big drama as a melee player got CC'd 7 times in a row by Mythrax and try hards failed to understand why his DPS was low. (I haven't played retail since that night)
    I can see how that would be an issue, and how it would color someone's opinion on combat trackers, but I honestly have never come across this situation.

    The main reason is, everyone in my raid knows the mechanics of the fight, and what it means for the various classes. If there is a DPS that is usually fairly good, and they are low on a fight with CC like that, everyone would know that his DPS was low due to CC.

    This is one of those times when people are blaming a combat tracker (not that you specifically did), when really the fault lies with the people present.
    Your right they have gotten much better mechanicly and much much harder. Which is a good thing.
    Saying everyone does and actually Having to are two different things. I believe that it is not needed people will figure it out. Not everyone but not everyone needs to. Addons make it easier and just because the DEv's over there are lazy and expect you to go to a third party site to download stuff to play their game don't it is good design. Jeff and many others at Intrepid have lots of experience and I think they will find a good balance without expecting the players to do their jobs for them.
    I agree with the notion of needing third party addons as being not ideal, but the only viable solution to that is to build that functionality in to the game itself.

    It absolutely is possible to develop raid content without combat trackers being required, thing is, those encounters will be dumped down from what they could otherwise be. So when Intrepid develop encounters under the false assumption that we dont have combat trackers working, those encounters will be fair less complex than if they developed encounters with the correct assumption in place.

    I also want to clarify what I mean by combat trackers are needed.

    Many encounters have aspects that are only able to be understood by looking at the logs of the fight. There are a number of reasons for this.

    While it is possible to spend several dozen hours going through your logs to identify these aspects of an encounter without a combat tracker, a combat tracker does nothing more than rearrange that same information.

    So, in saying a combat tracker is needed, what we are saying is that examining combat logs is needed, and a combat tracker takes that task from dozens of hours down to just hours.

    This is why I don't understand people arguing against combat trackers, they are just a reorganization of information.

    It's not just the combat trackers though. It's also the boss mods and macros on top it all. The last WoW raid boss I did back in BFA was G'huun and OMG it was insane how much stuff was going on in that fight. Just for anyone who didn't do it, the mythic version of the boss required guilds to use custom-built communication macros and warning scripts JUST FOR THAT BOSS because of how tight the timing was on certain mechanics.

    Like I said before, if you take those things away the fight becomes impossible. And that's the thing about WoW raids, they are specifically designed around the use of these addons which is why they are so complex and tightly tuned.

    Indeed.

    This is one of those things that some people look at as great, and some look at as really bad.

    The people that look at it as great are focusing on the content. There is no doubt the content itself is better, harder, more enjoyable because of these things.

    The people that look at it as bad focus on the fact you need third party tools for these encounters, and think that this is bad.

    I personally think that both groups are 100% correct, which is why I think the best solution (the only non-shit solution) is to build those tools in to the game.

    Then you can have those raids that are significantly better, harder and more enjoyable, and people that dont want to use third party tools dont need to.

    While there are no doubt people out there with other issues in regards to this, these two points are - in my experience - the two most common. A solution that meets the desires of both is what should be strived for, imo.

    There is no need to completely disregard either of these two groups.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    edited April 2021
    Saedu wrote: »
    bloodprophet, when your friend got CCed 7 times in the boss fight, was anyone looking at the CC taken combat tracker? Too many people just look at DPS and healing meters and don't take advantage of the wealth of other info available in the trackers.

    This is actually a fair point.

    As I said earlier, I only raid with people that know what everyone is doing.

    If I found myself in a situation where I was raiding with people that dont (which is likely to be the case if I play Ashes), I would probably anticipate this situation.

    If there is an encounter that CC's my DPS, I would set my combat tracker up so that I could past in time spent CC'd. If someone then had something to say about a DPS being low on that fight, I could then immediately past in to raid chat how long each person had spent CC'd in the fight.

    I would probably display it in the following manner;

    Character name; time CC'd; DPS; projected DPS if no CC.

    Paste that in to guild chat and watch people that dont know what they are talking about shut right up, because they then dont know what they are looking at, but they know everyone is looking at the same thing.
  • SaeduSaedu Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    I could live in a world where combat trackers (in game only, not things that aggregate to sites) exist, but boss timer mods do not.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Saedu wrote: »
    I could live in a world where combat trackers (in game only, not things that aggregate to sites) exist, but boss timer mods do not.

    Mods like that only really exist for WoW.
  • VhaeyneVhaeyne Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Noaani wrote: »
    Mods like that only really exist for WoW.

    Are you saying that boss helpers only exist for WOW?

    If so I want you to take a look at your forum ICON. There are a ton of boss helpers in ACT.
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    If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    Vhaeyne wrote: »
    Noaani wrote: »
    Mods like that only really exist for WoW.

    Are you saying that boss helpers only exist for WOW?

    If so I want you to take a look at your forum ICON. There are a ton of boss helpers in ACT.

    There are some packages you can download that have some AoE timers and such, but nothing at all like what WoW has.

    Also, though this is getting technical, these are not mods. They are arguably mods to ACT, but not to the games they are used in.
  • VhaeyneVhaeyne Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited April 2021
    Noaani wrote: »
    There are some packages you can download that have some AoE timers and such, but nothing at all like what WoW has.

    Also, though this is getting technical, these are not mods. They are arguably mods to ACT, but not to the games they are used in.

    ACT has TTS(Text to speak) for each raid mechanic within like a week or two after a patch in FFXIV. Not nearly as game breaking as WOW's DBM(Deadly Boss Mods). It is basically like having a raid leader that does perfect call outs, which is something that should be happening anyways.

    Still Yoshi-P (FFXIV's director) seems to be aware of this ACT mod, and considers it to be cheating. At one point there was a mod that allowed ACT to place markers in game perfectly whilst doing mechanics. FFXIV was patched within weeks to make it so that markers can not be moved in combat, because it allowed such a brain dead level of coordination. I was actually really happy to see that one go because I hate when people move markers mid combat.

    but, yes WOW players have it on easy mod a lot of the time with mechanics trackers.
    TVMenSP.png
    If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
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