The Weekly Marmot - 10/25 Man Shared Lockouts

[Lore]

[Aggathon]

Lore: I like the idea of being able to run the content more than once, and I think that would help out a lot with PuGs, instead of "oh hey let's run DS" "I can't I'm already saved to the first boss." yadda yadda. It would help.

What I'd be worried about though is an original LFR-esque abuse of the system, where you run it on alts, then re-run it with only 1 new person each time so that they can get all of the loot that drops and/or trade it to people that already ran it. We already know high-end guilds are willing to raid insane hours/week, what's to prevent them from abusing the system like that. Should we care if they do?

[Lestana]

I just thought about LFR loot locks outs and how they can be abused (obviously it would take up a lot of time) but its kinda like what happened when LFR started. If you have 9 people already locked for loot and the 10th is unsaved, you just keep swaping out the 10th person and run again and again and in a dumb theory you and can have 3 chances (in 10 man) per boss for the loot you want.

ok the first 9 are a bit gimped but if you in a 25 man guild you might have the subs fill those in for you so the main raiders each get there shots

madly time consuming but i could see it being done

[Lestana]

tbh i just thought, you can technically still do this in LFR atm but it doesnt really happen, then would HEROIC gear get guilds to do it

[Nagassh]

My biggest worry with separate 10-25man lockouts would be the additional lockout feeling mandatory. I spent WOTLK running both lockouts, because not running them resulted in feeling like you were gearing up at half the speed. Oraganising multiple 10man groups was a nightmare, but after swapping down to a 10man guild for various reasons, trying to swap "up" to a 25man level would be even harder, if not impossible.

That, more so than the perceived (and true on many bosses) "lighter" difficulty setting, would make me feel like I was playing the "casual" option when it comes to 10 v 25. I'd be locking myself out of an entire reset of gear.

That said, it's certainly a daunting task finding an incentive for people to run content twice without offering gear.

[Bovinity]

[Aggathon]

Oh ya, that's another thing, I feel like non-separate lockouts would put 10 man guilds at an extreme disadvantage gear-wise unless there was some sort of loot limitation, which is hard to do if gear is still tradeable. It's really easy for a 25 man guild to drop down to 1 or 2 10 mans, not so easy for a 10 man guild to go up to 25 man size.

[Fetzie]

IF they make it so that you can run both, they will have to make it so that you cannot loot the second time around. Otherwise a 25 man raid could make two ten man raids, and get twice the loot (and legendary acquisition would be much faster too) while a ten man raid could not (so easily) do this. It would have to be along the lines of the LFR system where you can run the raid as often as you like, but only be eligible for loot, any quest items and achievements once.

[Aggathon]

If legendaries are bear-ass collecting like they are now though, just running two lockouts would double your odds because you could run 25s with RogueA, then 9 people from 25s run 10s with RogueB, and you get 2 legendaries for your 25 man raids that much faster...

I just see it as waaaay too easy for 25 man raiders to turn this into a significant loot advantage.


Oh you have 5 bench players that didn't get a shot at loot? Re-run the instance in 10 man and farm loot for those 5. You can kind of do that now if you have enough alts, but then at least there's 10 people eligible for loot instead of just 5.

[Krenian]

I'm going to give advanced warning right now:

Any degradation of this topic turning into a 10 vs 25 man argument is going to receive a swift kick of mod asskicking. I'm tired of the topic coming back up towards that argument.

If you don't have ANYTHING good to say, bite your damn tongue or twist your fingers or whatever. STOP for a second, reread your post and say "Hrm, is this going to get me sniped in the head."

Cause if you have to do that, it might not be a good idea to press the button.

Fair and ONLY warning.

[feralminded]

Thank you Krenian ... these topics have been devolving fast when the truth is we have larger things to worry about that we can all agree suck.

[mavfin]

In the end, it all comes down to the fact that one person's "Oh, I like having that choice" is another's "But I don't want to *have to* do that!"

We've seen it with LFR tier gear, 10/25 shared/non-shared lockout, and the stacking raid nerf that can be turned off. So, full agreement on these types of subjects is going to be rare. The competitive are always going to feel compelled to do all they can to make themselves better. or faster, and the not-so-competitive or "We play for fun" like choices. Not that simple, but that's usually where the line falls. Not criticizing either side, really. You play the way you play, and Blizzard has to decide what choices they give, and what choices they take away. Neither side is going to get all that they want at the expense of the other.

[feralminded]

I just want our choice to not be the same content, in line with Lore's final comment. Honestly this is what I miss most from the BC/Vanilla days ... choice. Back then when content wasn't auto-invalidated after 6 months you literally had dozens of instances and/or raids to choose from that all could offer you as a player some challenge and your character some advancement. Now content goes by in the blink of an eye and then it doesn't matter all anymore. This is a mistake on their part and I believe a compromise between the BC and Wrath models would be better for the game and players overall.

I fondly remember in Vanilla rotating MC and ZG/AQ20 and BWL and AQ40 ... it was like never ending content. Basically the only one we ALWAYS did was BWL, but we would take shots at AQ40 and some weeks put down the 20 mans and others MC. It was all pretty awesome having a plethora of things to do.

[mavfin]

Not to make this a 10/25 discussion...but you're saying you want your own special content because you're X kind of player, and Y other kind of player doesn't get to do it? That's not going to happen; Blizzard's not going to go that way. Or did I misunderstand you?

We already have three difficulties of content, and the LFR player isn't going to do heroic, so that's still special...

[Slyvar]

I just want our choice to not be the same content, in line with Lore's final comment. Honestly this is what I miss most from the BC/Vanilla days ... choice. Back then when content wasn't auto-invalidated after 6 months you literally had dozens of instances and/or raids to choose from that all could offer you as a player some challenge and your character some advancement. Now content goes by in the blink of an eye and then it doesn't matter all anymore. This is a mistake on their part and I believe a compromise between the BC and Wrath models would be better for the game and players overall.

Also, smaller gaps in iLevel help keep content relative. When I was running Naxx40 as a resto druid, I got an upgrade out of BWL on an off-night raid. When we were running Ulduar in WotLK, we literally DE'd every single drop in Naxx on off-night runs, and the problem is even more exaggerated in Cataclysm.

[gd_void]

Two thoughts i have on an lfr style lock out

1) Selling runs, Guild #1 on the server will now sell you your <insert heroic boss ach>, Which would be bad imo happens now but not as much as it would if they could just run it over and over.

2) My God it would make testing applicants easier, Run test runs on an offday see if the new guy will fit in or not, he will still get gear so he's not wasting his raid lock out, but he would hold back the main groups lock out aswell

[Leucifer]

I'm going to give advance warning right now:

Any degradation of this topic turning into a 10 vs 25 man argument is going to receive a swift kick of mod asskicking. I'm tired of the topic coming back up towards that argument.

If you don't have ANYTHING good to say, bite your damn tongue or twist your fingers or whatever. STOP for a second, reread your post and say "Hrm, is this going to get me sniped in the head."

Cause if you have to do that, it might not be a good idea to press the button.

Fair and ONLY warning.

Then you should probably remove the post altogether, as this is like chumming shark infested water. You yourself said that if you saw another 25 man thing you'd want to stab someone. (See PST 73)

@Bov..... Awesome pic. Great start to my day. Thanks. Sums up my initial response.

I'll keep my sermon short......

Part of the reason they moved to a shared lockout iirc was so that 25's wouldn't feel compelled to run content twice. This was an issue with ICC that raised a lot of ire. I know that one of the current issues is.... there's this feel that people have to run LFR. I've seen that mentioned here several times. I also know that one of the current common complaints has been that DS was not compelling. This sense of "burnout" is one of the big reasons they switched. (Which..... has occurred anyway, notably with t12 where some guilds got "burned out" throwing themselves against the Rag-Wall.... and is apparent with t13 where the content just evokes a sense of "Meh")

Splitting them up again..... I see no major issues with. Give the 25 man raiders something. Extra loot for running the same stuff 2x over? I have no real problem with that. You're running stuff twice. If you want to subject yourself to the extra raiding, extra loot is only fair.

The big question, one that Agg touches on, is the issue of legendaries. If it's the current "bear-ass" collecting model, yeah, there will be problems. Maybe a shared lockout cap on the number of "bear-asses" that any one person can collect? This would force the issue of distributing the bear-asses around. Yes.... 25's will probably get theirs faster. Congrats.... there's your reward for running a 25 man.

Of course, legendaries themselves are a "radioactive topic" for all it's concerned.

Enough said.

[Slyvar]

Not to make this a 10/25 discussion...but you're saying you want your own special content because you're X kind of player, and Y other kind of player doesn't get to do it? That's not going to happen; Blizzard's not going to go that way. Or did I misunderstand you?

We already have three difficulties of content, and the LFR player isn't going to do heroic, so that's still special...

You seem to get so up in arms about this topic, that you completely misread what others are saying. He's trying to say that back then you had more choice in raids because you didn't get free loot that brought you up to the current progression raid's iLevel. This gave people a choice of what to do, because more than one tier of instances were relevant at a time. (And no...running 3 different difficulty levels of the same instance, isn't much of a choice.)

[mavfin]

You seem to get so up in arms about this topic, that you completely misread what others are saying. He's trying to say that back then you had more choice in raids because you didn't get free loot that brought you up to the current progression raid's iLevel. This gave people a choice of what to do, because more than one tier of instances were relevant at a time. (And no...running 3 different difficulty levels of the same instance, isn't much of a choice.)

That's why I asked if I misunderstood him, Slyvar. On the subject of ilevels: the raiders themselves *caused* the ilevel separation of tiers when they tried to do smaller tiers with the original Karazhan. Raiders basically said it wasn't worth running because it wasn't a big enough upgrade. Blizzard upped the ilevels of the loot, and the rest is history, and this was in BC.

[Slyvar]

That's why I asked if I misunderstood him, Slyvar. On the subject of ilevels: the raiders themselves *caused* the ilevel separation of tiers when they tried to do smaller tiers with the original Karazhan. Raiders basically said it wasn't worth running because it wasn't a big enough upgrade.

Well, a smaller gap in iLevel would help you feel like more content is relevant at any given time. The biggest boost to this would be to take away the valor gear in its current form. If valor points (or it's equivalent) gave gear that was 2 tiers below the current progression raid, instead of 1 tier, then more content would be relevant at any given moment.

Instead, as it stands, even a fresh level 85 is expected to be geared and ready for the current raid before they can join a raiding guild. Where back in vanilla and TBC guilds actually did gear runs for new members, because if you weren't already in a raiding guild that quality of gear was not available to you.