Thursday, August 6, 2009

There Is No Triumph Over Grinding

The cost of all tier gear, excluding 25-Hard gear, requires tons of emblems. For the dedicated raider, emblems will be the limiting factor in how quickly they gear up.



The part that gets to me, is that a 25 man raider *can't just raid 25 mans*. With assumed equal emblem drop rate from both 10 and 25 (so far, both Northrend Beasts 10 and 25 drop 3 Triumph, and I'll make the assumption that the heroic versions will drop the same), a normal 25 man raider doubles his weekly allotment of triumph by clearing the ten man each week, triples it by also doing the ten man hard mode, and almost quadruples it by also running the heroic daily each day that week. And if they're doing hard mode 25 man, there is even more.

I only plan on doing ten man raids, so my emblem of triumph rate will be even slower, and the period of time in which I'll need to raid both normal and heroic ten man (after my group has progressed past the normal ten man) will be even longer.

There is no gearing out of this requirement! Until you have 410 Emblems (Enough for T9 Triumph, and non Tier-Side grade offsets), you can't stop grinding. You are compelled to clear the same content multiple times a week. And if you want off set pieces to allow different gear configurations (you should), pick up any of the conquest level gear as stepping stones, or God forbid off-spec gear... I don't even want to imagine.

I know I can get in the groove of doing the same bosses once each week, as many tiers of raiding has proven.

Doing both 10 and 25 man versions of the same boss in the same week borders being annoying. Its why I didn't want do Naxx 10 while I was doing Naxx 25 - but this was ok, because with Naxx 25 rewards being superior, there was no reason to do Naxx 10.
I can't imagine doing the same bosses up to four times a week, to get appropriately geared. It's lazy design, and it is being forced on raiders. It is not just an option to raid hard content to get good gear, as it has been in the past.

Notice I'm not angry that it is an option to gear up over time by doing easy content. That's all fine and good by me. I've just always enjoyed that I was able to take the option of doing hard content exclusively for my gear, rather then grinding gold/rep/emblems.

I smell resentment in the future. Those players who grind the everliving daylights out of multiple raids each week and the heroic daily unfailingly, will be bitter at the people they play with, who don't have that time.

In LOKI, I always enjoyed that we were able to support people from all walks of life - including those who's jobs/wifes/school limited their play time to the few hours a week we raided, and then just enough to procure consumables outside of that. As a matter of fact, I'd say that the raid schedule drew in these sorts. What will LOKI (or any other limited-raid-time guild) look like in a few weeks, when some raid members are slipping into their 5th piece of T9, and others are just buying their first?

7 comments:

Argon said...

The number of badges need is pretty annoying, but at the same time it shouldn't take that long to clear it, as there are only 4 encounters with no trash.

Unknown said...

Five encounters (Beasts, Faction Champions, J-somethingsomething, Twin Val'kyr, and Anub).

But still - even if its a short clear, the expectation ends up being that we will fill raid time repeating the same content.

Franklin said...

Is there any other content to clear?

You act as if you're not already doing the same thing; farming old content over and over again for gear.

This has been going on since Molten Core. All they've done is actually make it a little easier to grab badges outside the raid environment.

Steven Riniker said...

I made the comment that the only way the badge changes can hurt someoen that raids is if your prefered game style was to just log on for the raids.

3.2 will make is so "raid loggers" will fall behind in gear to people that raid and also play more.

Pretty much everyone is just grinding to "level 85."

In the short term it won't matter much. Do people in your RAIDs do 25man and hardmodes? Look at your raid group as an island. If your gear progression is comparable to the rest of your raid I don't really see how it matters that people you don't group with that are doing more or different content get gear at a faster pace.

Justin R. said...

"It's lazy design, and it is being forced on raiders."

I could not agree more with that statement. But, if there was ever a time to release poorly designed content, that time is now. With Blizzard set to announce their next expansion, and possibly patch 3.3, in two weeks, their lack of creativity with this patch will be quickly forgiven (at least temporarily).

Maintaining consistent raid attendance until 3.3 will be difficult. But if the first encounter is any indication of what's to come, I think people will be pugging this place like VoA in no time. To me, that is a disappointment in itself.

logtar said...

Our guild is freaking crazy, we went to the other side and created lowbees and are pretty much putting raid on hold... weird isn't it.

I think the new system is slow for top gear, but at least makes the content accessible. I do agree that it does seem to "punish" the raider and makes them a grinder... but aren't we ALL grinders in one way or another?

Everblue said...

Hey Chad - you've been quiet. Everything ok?