The Weekly Marmot - Challenge Accepted

[Toypop]

I just hope they never make Challenge modes part of LFG; it's when the casual (and I don't mean that in any bad way) crowd starts having access in and LFD format that nerfs happen. "We want to clear the content, we want a chance to get the cool transmorgs, we don't have time to form groups, we're not in a guild, etc." Some of that was vaild for gear when you make end game THE game, but not for something like this.

There's nothing wrong with having a special feature that's billed as special for a limited portion of your customer base that only gives bragging rights, ahciev and transmorg - nothing tangible like gear. Not everyone can hit from the black tees; not everyone can hit from the three point line, not everyone can hit a 95 mph fastball (unless its' thrown my Phil Hughes or Soriano), so not everyone can get a gold, silver or bronze.

I personally think the DF/casual crowd won't even bother running them as the rewards won't justify the effort. VP will be more efficiently farmed in regular modes and there are plenty of other places to acquire nice transmog items in a far less stressful environment - running old TBC dungeons etc.

Even if they can get past a couple of bosses and maybe after a couple of hours and lots of frustration/kicks actually finish the run, no amount of nerfing would ever allow them to earn the top medals. Sure many DF players used to be top class raiders and in an organised group of similarly skilled friends they would be every bit as good as the current batch of active top raiders. But random DF groups?!? No chance.

With regards to popularity, I think sites like Tankspot and shows like Legendary will give a lot of air time to challenge modes leaderboards but this will be totally out of all proportion to the usage figures as a percentage of the entire player base. In actual fact I think they will be super-niche even by the standards of heroic raiding.

Very few will want to put in the effort just for a leaderboard position and some transmogrification items and I suspect they may actually go down the same road as the casual players and calculate that it is simply easier to VP cap whilst watching TV in DF than have to wait for guild mates and pay attention in challenge mode. Guess it depends on how much VP they need and how much faster they can earn it taking into account the additional time taken to form the group plus the additional time take to complete the run.

[worgick]

Challenge modes for me have never been about the medal, but the time. It has a potential to be a very long lasting content that is easy to organize but hard to pull off.
Not a lot of people can participate in the 25-h world first race (or even the 10 man race at that). A 5 man race seems like something that is much more approachable, and the race does not end just because someone got gold first.

We may get to see some extremely talented/skilled players that could not participate in the PvE race because of time commitments, and may also see the PvP playberbase participating in it

Challenge modes definately. I see 5 members of the guild online a lot more often than I see anything resembling a raiding crew. Who knows, it might be a way for newbs to gain some teamwork experience after LFR'ing some gear to be normalized........ It is not as if they are holding back progression. Heck a #1 progression, #1 challenge, and The PVE'rs in a guild being pretty decent PVP'rs due to running time trials with regular PVP in the guild?

I wonder if that would be an optimization, since gear is normalized, would you gain some dps, durability by having some PVP gear as well that would probably normalize, but still give a margin.....?

[mavfin]

Challenge modes will take the place of the guild runs of the orig Cata heroics I used to do. Then I can pug heroic 5-mans like I did in Wrath when the guildies aren't around.

[Livistos]

I really think that I'm looking forward to this feature for 2 reasons:
1. I hope that it gives me that 45-minute baron feeling I had back in Vanilla (while just wearing dungeon Tier 1.0 and working toward my 1.5 set)
2. I hope that it helps non-hardcore players become more hardcore.


Let me explain #2 a little more. I think that LFR was great in terms of giving players more accessibility to content, but I think it was a GIGANTIC step back in Blizzard's approach to "we make games which help casual players become hardcore players". LFR helps casual players see content and get free loot while never helping them be better. You find me a single casual wow player who became a better player "thanks to" LFR. The only way I could believe that to be true is if maybe he had never raided before, saw how cool raiding really was and then was motivated to get better on his own, got better, did better numbers, then joined a raiding guild. You can play an entire expansion in LFR as a casual player and never improve your dps. In fact, the quality of player doing LFR toward the end of an expansion is worse than the beginning. After 5.0.4, testing new keybindings and bars with class changes in LFR, I saw morons who had no idea how the mechanics worked and worse, trolls who purposefully told people to do the opposite of what the real mechanics were to try to wipe us. Overall LFR doesn't pressure any individual in the raid, it just doesn't. Individuals don't matter in LFR since all you need is 10 capable people and LFR is still completable.

The journey of mastery is a tough journey. Having the right, repeatable challenges available to test and hone your skills is key. No one gets better on training dummies alone. And that's where challenge modes can help with that. Challenge modes help small groups of people get better. If a bad player doesn't even get bronze, hopefully they will be motivated to at least get bronze. If an ok to good player gets bronze, maybe they will be motivated to get silver. If a great player gets silver, maybe this challenge will help them hone their skills to get gold. If the challenge is there, people hopefully if they wish to "master" their character, the content, and the game... hopefully they will be motivated to get better and this challenge mode system gives them that progressive path, progressive challenge to slowly over time become BETTER. Not just able to beat it eventually thanks to being more highly geared, but able to beat it because their skill has improved.

Let me give you an analogy. In Starcraft II, the achievements on the storyline mode made me a better player. The challenge of getting all those storymode achievements on all the difficulties really pushed me to become a better starcraft player. Now, am I a good player vs player SCII player, no... but I'm better at the game than I was when I started. I think challenge modes can do the same for WoW players who want to get better at the game. People rarely can improve just by reading stuff on a website and sitting on a dummy. They need a goal, they need that challenge which pushes them to become better. That's why heroic raiding makes good raiders into great raiders over time.

One final good / bad (depending on your perspective) this could help with player skill evaluation in fact... maybe your average player if they work hard can get a bronze, but maybe for a hardcore guild you require all your players get silver... almost as a skill check. Maybe for the super elite guilds, they require players get gold. This could pressure players who wouldn't otherwise "care" about challenge modes to have to do it. I dunno, just an idea. Could be good, could be bad, could be indifferent.