The pros and cons of raid IDs
by Mike Schramm 
Feb 11th 2009 at 5:00PM
Freya recently posted a plea on the forums: Please, Blizzard, get rid of raid IDs. Raid IDs were put in the game as a way to make sure the best loot in the game didn't flow freely: rather than just running endgame raids over and over (and over), Blizzard put a hold on just how much one player can run them. If you get saved to a raid ID, you're usually out of that raid until things reset on Tuesdays. But there are lots of issues -- at this point, agrees Zarhym, it's too easy to get saved to a raid. It's lame to jump in on a PuG where you do one boss and then the group breaks up for the rest of the week, and it's even lamer to have your raid ID ninja'ed by a few folks who decide they want to disband the group early. The mechanic is important to keep around, though -- if you think it's too easy to get endgame gear now, just think what things would be like if people could run Naxx or OS daily or even hourly.
But the actual saving is an issue, and one that the developers are working on -- they're planning on making it so that you would only be saved to an instanced when it's partially or even completely cleared (though that too would likely spread a little more loot around than wanted -- people would run the instance until the last boss and reset it to do it all over again). We'll have to see how this pans out.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding, NPCs
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Detective Feb 11th 2009 5:07PM
We run the instances over and over again. Other than keeping us from getting completely geared and stop playing.. it seems like the raid ids are just to keep the money flowing into blizzard's pockets? ... why should there be a reset? Loot flowing better, is that so wrong?
sephirah Feb 11th 2009 5:12PM
While surely it's made to get more money, think about all the people that clear a raid in some weeks, farm it for some months and then get mortally bored.
With a daily reset, they'll clear in 1 week, farm it for 2/3 weeks and then QQ forever on the forums about how much they're bored to do the same raid every day with nothing new for the next months.
crsh Feb 11th 2009 6:15PM
If you get geared too quickly, you'll be bored, thus you might suspend your subscription. So yes, it's an artificial cockblock, err, "pacing mechanism" that serves financial motives.
superwombat Feb 11th 2009 11:00PM
"they're planning on making it so that you would only be saved to an instanced when it's partially or even completely cleared"
Where are you getting this crazy idea? Blue has never posted anything close to that anywhere I have seen, and none of your links contain anything even similar to that idea.
Did you come in to work drunk today?
It's far more likely that they will either:
A. Give a lock confirmation window if you're about to be saved to an instance.
or
B. Save per boss instead of per instance.
Of course I'd prefer B, but A is far more likely.
rosencratz Feb 12th 2009 7:53AM
Ummm! raid ID's aren't a problem as such. in fact they're great, they're not a Blizz conspiracy. They exist so we can run a raid, kill a few bosses, wipe on one of them untill raid time ends and try again the next day without having to restart from scratch.
The real issue here is raid resets and why're they're not so frequent... The point here is that raids can't be automatically reset regularly or else there'd be no point in saving them. What's the point in a raid ID that lasts a day or so when your guild runs once every 3 days, the automatic resets NEED to be quite long buy their very nature.
So what about adding manual resets into the mix aswell? Well firstly who controls the manual reset? Only the raid leader? Everyone in the raid? Potentially giving everyone or only one the power to make or break 25 peoples raiding. It's an odd concept and it makes sense that resets have prefixed times.
So what about getting saved to raids? Well this is the real problem for the majority of people in the raid... it makes sense that Blizz would try to fix this rather than remove resets. (I guess you guys forget that not everyone clears all raiding content in a single night)
They may aswell make the raids save per boss as they do in heroics to be honest... but then ofcourse we could farm trash... Solving this problem would be to remove decent drops from the initial trash or putting a boss at the entrance to every raid.
Jehosaphat Feb 11th 2009 5:08PM
I think they could save you to each boss without locking you out of the rest of the raid. Each person would get one shot at loot from a specific boss, then would be saved to that boss for the week, and unable to loot them even if they get into another raid. It solves both the problems: you won't be locked out of a raid due to a PUG gone wrong, but you can't farm loot anymore than you can now.
Masarah Feb 11th 2009 5:09PM
I was thinking this as well. Give each boss an ID which you get locked to when you down that boss.
Discord Feb 11th 2009 5:11PM
Great idea.
Shevaresh Feb 11th 2009 5:16PM
Oh. Dear. God.
At first, I was thinking that this sounds like a wonderful concept.
Then, it hit me that this would just amount to the top x% of raiders just running OS+2 over.. and over... and over... to gear up the other y%. Or Heigan. Or having the same tank for Momma said Knock You Out 8 times in a week.
AyaJulia Feb 11th 2009 5:16PM
I was just coming into the comments to suggest this. I pugged a Naxx 25 last night which cleared Spider and Plague wings. They plan to continue tonight, but I have guild stuff tonight and won't be able to go. I wish that wasn't my one shot for the week and I could still join another pug for the other two wings, but it'll be all cleared out in about 12 hours.
They should use their phasing system for this, IMO. You know, the same one that obnoxiously prevents people from helping with group quests in Icecrown if they haven't done the pre-reqs? In my example, if I walked into Faerlina's room with a 25-man group, I would be alone there with an empty room while my 24 groupies would have a room full of mobs to fight.
Konchu Feb 11th 2009 6:16PM
I was thinking the same thing I think being bound to the boss is fine. If not breaking up the wings could make it at least a little more tolorable. Last night I grouped and get 1 wing down and one boss into the next only to have my internet go down and lose out possibly for the entire week of 10 man naxx.
Sharda Feb 11th 2009 6:21PM
If you use a phasing system where some of the players can see mobs while others can't, couldn't that be expoited where by you have healers who have already cleared the boss heal the raid without worrying about splash damage etc. e.g. Sapphiron.
Trying to program around that would be quite difficult I would have thought
AyaJulia Feb 11th 2009 8:37PM
@Sharda: No, the phasing system treats anyone who is out of phase as if they are out of range. They wouldn't be healable.
Dogmeat Feb 12th 2009 7:22AM
I thought about this as well, but it has one flaw: It would lock people out of raids for the week who haven't run yet, because if one person hadn't downed a boss, he'd have to be cleared again to go any farther into that wing. The end bosses in Naxx would be pretty much unreachable unless you kept the exact same people in the raid every single night. Thus nobody would want you to run if you'd missed a night, since that would mean bosses that 24 people had cleared (along with their trash) would still be up with only you having a chance to loot them.
And you couldn't phase it, because if half the raid had done a boss, what chance would the other half have of actually getting him down? Zero I'm thinking.
You'd have to design a raid to be ID-less, you couldn't just slap the feature onto existing raids.
Convoluted Feb 11th 2009 5:09PM
Why not just make it so that if you down a boss if you down it again you can't receive any loot from it until reset? Seems simple enough.
Hoggersbud Feb 11th 2009 8:04PM
That seems simple...but think of how much overhead it'll add. Instead of tracking one instance, two for heroics, Naxx will be like a dozen each.
Convoluted Feb 12th 2009 8:34AM
All I see it is another table in a database. When the character drops a boss it sends a query to the db if they dropped the boss that week then set off a flag to not allow this person to loot. If one isn't there mark it so if they down it again within the week it will flag it then.
Falcom Feb 12th 2009 2:34PM
This would not only work, the system already exists. If you wipe on the last boss of heroic VH, zone in again you have to down the bosses again, but you get no badges, and no loot, until you down the next 'new' boss. Simple, effective, already exists, why not implement it?
Convoluted Feb 12th 2009 2:40PM
10 Points to Falcom
Eric Feb 11th 2009 5:10PM
And what happens when you get lured in to a fully cleared instance by a jerk. Or if you just need something in an empty heroic, like an elder. Cleared and saved. Although Heroics aren't the issue, it's the best example...