Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsThoughts on Icecrown Citadel and gating
by Allison Robert 
Jan 28th 2010 at 4:00PM
That's the part of the gating system -- "Raiders (having) the fear of God struck into them for wiping just once," as Lume puts it -- of which I'm not overly fond myself. A key raider lagging or disconnecting can result in a wipe on much of this content, and more particularly on the two bosses (Putricide and Lana'thel) for whom limited attempts currently exist. Both command very high DPS requirements, so even if you can easily afford the loss of a laggy DPS or two on something like Festergut (which is pretty baldly a DPS check in its own right), a single person going offline on Lana'thel-25 can wreck both the attempt and peoples' nerves. Losing 4 Blood-Queen Lana'thel attempts last week due to the bug with Kinetic Bombs aggroing her through the ceiling during the Council fight was equally frustrating.
To play devil's advocate, the gating system does have a few things going for it. As I've written previously, any honest player would admit that blowing through content isn't an ideal way to experience it. The gating mechanic also pressures people to fix their mistakes more quickly, and that's something raid leaders like a lot (let's be honest, we've all been in raids where at least 75% of the wipes were due to really dumb mistakes). And Blizzard isn't really restricting your ability to kill these bosses so much as it's punishing raids that attempt to brute-force a kill without fixing strategy flaws.
Unfortunately, this has the side effect of punishing raids for more innocent mistakes or technical problems. Ultimately, I'd guess that gated content has a different impact on each raid, and it's a bit irritating that some of this impact is out of the raid's collective control.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
Erwin Jan 28th 2010 5:06PM
My issue with gated content is that the technical limitations of this game have had a far greater impact in losing attempts in ToGC25 or in ICC.
We have had numerous attempts wiped due to DC's and unplayable lag in raids.
With the tight dps of festergut to the just about perfect execution required on Queen,
raids can not see any lag or dc's normally to be successful. since that is never a guarantee, limited attempts have no business in raids at all.
I agree with their motive of making this another way to "challenge" raiders but due to the above concerns this is absolutely NOT the best way to do it.
The hard mode method, to me seems to fit this bill more than limited attempts.
People in the higher end raiding will always raid till its dead and, short of turning stuff off, is the only to stop it.
So in fixing a 1% prob, blizzard has messed it up for the other 99%. GG
Firestyle Jan 28th 2010 5:08PM
Limited attempts worked in ToGCr - but who uses 50 attempts anyway?
Limited attempts in ICC is fair if Blizzard can provide consistent reliable gameplay. Recently, we've experienced some signficant server-side lag which is just unacceptable if this is how they are going to release content. Until the qualityof gameplay on all realms is lag-free, I'm not supporting limited attempts unless there is a number of attempts such as for ToGCr where you'll never really use that number of attempts.
TC Jan 28th 2010 5:30PM
Here is my two copper. Im from Hellscream US. Sure we arnt the best raiding server but we have some good guilds. Most guilds can clear the first four bosses but they are the first four so they shouldnt be uber hard to begin with. However only two guilds have killed Queen after the first week. This tells me that these boss fights are well tunedand people in 258 gear are going to blow through them because they overgear the place. So i think the difficulty is good.
As for world and server firsts. Guess what they are still being got by the best guilds. And guilds who killed the first four quickly and acted like they are uber got hit in the face by the next set and have been given a dose of reality.
TLDR Bosses are well tuned, The best guilds will still get world firsts.
obc Jan 28th 2010 5:29PM
what i like about the system:
not releasing the whole content at once but one floor after another. guilds can get used to ICC and after tackling some bosses go raid TOGC again and collect some achievments. and the more floors are released the more you can switch the focus from TOGC to ICC and you already have collected upgrades for the new floor.
what i don't like: Hard-Mode content not availabe right away.
I love hardmode and normal difficulty and its brilliant in that it gives the normal raiders the oppurtunity to see everything in new content and gives the uber-raids some challenge.
So: Use this new design system to slow down the speed by which uber-raid progress. rather than with limited.
Make the HM available right away and make the HM-Content REALLY difficult instead of slowing down average-guilds who might want to try out different setups, different strategies, use everyone available rather than sitting people out when they have a bad connection. They need their 30 wipes a week to get the hang of a fight.
Hardcore raiders won't care for the lmited tries on normal-mode coz they'll beat the bosses anyway.
On the other hand a normal guild is ruined by the limited tries system and no one else.
Elite guilds can zerg whole ICC within a few hours for all i and they care, what's important to them and what counts nowadays are: achievments and Hardmode.
So let the uber-raids chew on extremly difficult hard-mode content (i hope it really is thunderous difficult) and give the normal-raiders a fair chance to progress.
and if blizzard fears that people might brute force the contect than fix the fights.
jfofla Jan 28th 2010 5:41PM
Flash forward to first 25 Man Hard Mode Attempt on Arthas
Bloody player crawling on hands and knees to escape the horror. Arthas' hand reaches out and grabs the player's ankle, dragging him back in the door.
We hear "Oh dear God! No! No!"
Looking forward to it.
Pyromelter Jan 28th 2010 6:14PM
Fail people failed on your attempts.
Working as intended.
Pyromelter Jan 28th 2010 6:18PM
Speaking of fail, meant to be a reply to marzipan. Please downvote.
Pyromelter Jan 28th 2010 6:40PM
As a member of a hardcore (but not elite) guild, I would say there is no one in my guild that has a problem with the gating as it is.
A quick glance over on a guild website that IS hardcore (namely ensidia), shows that they aren't qq'ing about the gating at all.
Which just leaves the casuals, or the moderate hardcore/moderately casual crowd. Most if not all of them aren't even seeing putricide/lana'thel. Lana'thel is very healing intensive as well as being a dps race. From my personal experience, you either get close on them and down them within a few attempts, or you aren't geared/skilled enough to do it as a group. 15 wipes is a LOT of wipes too... consider all the prep, the running, the repairing, the buffing, the food, that's at least 3 hours of wiping if you use all your attempts. In my opinion, well-played and well-geared characters who can down rot/fester should be able to do Putricide, and the same with blood princes/lana'thel. After you get the mechanics down of Lana'thel, she's pretty easy, assuming you've got 3 healers with good throughput. If you can't kill them within 15 attempts, it's not very likely you are going to kill them in your next 15 for that week.
In other words: The system is fine. The only place I see people QQ'ing about it is here, and select messages on other boards/blogs. I think the vast majority of people playing the game are fine with the system. Only complaining I see is from people who are on websites and not actually playing the game.
Utakata Jan 28th 2010 6:58PM
I think gating is one of those ideas like Gearscore and Recount that where meant for a really good purposes of gaging group and individual progress that ended up as flogging canes for unscrupulous raid leads. I know the latter two are addons whilst gating is a ingame mechanic...but in the end they all seem to greif the hard working player. And thus making the game very unfun.
Radiophonic Jan 28th 2010 7:38PM
IMO the limited attempts need to be kept with heroic modes as they don't have any business being on normal mode bosses.
Hasha Jan 28th 2010 8:13PM
I really like the limited attemps because I hate pointless wiping for hours.
I mean if everyone gives his best and you make a little bit progress each time its no problem but if you wipe over and over even if you give your best because someone else does not do his job, limited attemps encourages this person to get better / to be swapped out and that you don't play into the late night hours and get up very sleepy.
Tordenflesk Jan 29th 2010 6:14AM
End-of-expansion, end-game top-tier content is hard? NO WAI!?!!?!?!?!??!?!??!
/facepalm
timmy! Jan 29th 2010 8:03AM
WoW is serious business
Clbull Jan 30th 2010 2:40PM
Gating sucks, it slows progression down to a halt, in order to make the content seem longer.
End of discussion
God. Jan 31st 2010 1:12AM
Your right. You don't need 9 or 24 other people with appropriate gear to clear content. Just solo the LK when he comes out.
Its a team game. Get it?
I hope you leave for good. Players like you that have ruined the game. Get lost.
Lume Feb 3rd 2010 7:27PM
I understand the idea of gating pressures top guilds to be on top of their game to get the world first, instead of putting in hours upon hours to kill it. But the guilds that often get world firsts even in gated content are still putting in hours in some manner:
1. Doing alt runs and getting their alts as geared as their mains so they can use those alts for progress when raid composition plays a big part in success.
2. Practicing the fights on alts before doing them on mains, so essentially raiding twice in a week. For some, even three times. And trying to get it down on alts if they miss it on their main raid.
Gating hasn't really changed anything in that regard, despite Blizzard's intentions. And these examples are KNOWN, as two former Lunacy members are in Might right now, one of the only guilds to successfully do Tribute to Immortality.
..
The primary issue I have with gating is how the content feels. WoW is supposed to be partially driven by story and lore. It's supposed to have this feeling of awe and wonder when you work your way through an instance. Gating ruins those feelings to some degree.
I have no problem with gating the last boss of an instance, as that boss is truly where the challenge lies. Because if someone doesn't get it on their main run the first time, then they are likely to lose if someone else does. As soon as it opens. And I think that's fine. Especially if that end boss is particularly difficult, which they should be for the last boss in an expansion.
But for the rest of the instance? I think it's terrible.
All things I've articulated before, but wanted to reinforce.
I realize I'm late to my own party, here. I've been busy playing ME2. =)
Lume Feb 3rd 2010 7:49PM
I'll put it this way. The only reason we didn't kill Lana'thel 10 is because of the people we had available, one of them had a connection that simply isn't working. We spent 5 attempts simply trying to work through that because no one else we knew was available to help us.
Then a social PvP-oriented player with a pally logged on and we grabbed him. We had 6 attempts left.
We lost attempts on Putricide for "simple mistakes." First attempt, a healer was focusing on the wrong tank on pickup. Second attempt, the DPS spaced and forced the transition just after an ooze spawned, before I could yell over Vent not to transition. Third attempt, someone DC'd. Fourth attempt, someone DC'd again. So we came back and one-shot it on another night when people were more focused.
After that, we spent 6 attempts trying to work through someone's connection problems. It was Monday, so we didn't exactly have a choice to put it off until things were settled. So we went for it. First attempt, he didn't DC, but people weren't quite warmed up. Second attempt, he DC'd, essentially leaving us to two-heal it from 100 until roughly 60%. Which is... not easy, to say the least.
We had him turn off data-intensive mods. We had him turn off vent. We tried everything, and still nothing. So we had to find someone else. Lucky for us, that's when a social member logged on and we had them help on their pally. So finally we had a group capable of doing it.
The pally had never done it before, but he learned quickly. His first attempt was shaky. But after that? Solid. And we finally made some progress on seeing beyond 50% without someone DCing or locking up.
I note one attempt was wasted by someone spacing and pulling aggro. He normally doesn't. But he and the DPS near him who got BM died and we lose the attempt.
On the last attempt, we got her to 7%, only losing because we had not yet seen the issue surrounding the bite and her 2nd air phase. The person who got the first bite was feared when his debuff was running out, and we learned that person needs to wait to bite so that's not an issue. Those subtleties are easy to miss when you have been trying to deal with technical issues and haven't had solid attempts because of them. Those issues are easily rectified, but you lose an attempt learning them.
It goes to show we're perfectly capable of killing it, but didn't because of connection issues, simple mistakes and the even more limited ability to learn because of attempts lost due to those issues.
I'm no longer ultra-hardcore, as I used to be. So I know what it's like to be in that top crowd. We were 40th in the U.S. on M'uru, afterall. And now that I've stepped back, I can see how blaringly problematic these issues are. It's reinforced my sensitivity to both sides of the coin. Do limited attempts challenge you to perfect play? Yes. But it's not necessarily fun in general. And to make content challenging, limited attempts are not the only mechanic that can solve the issue. If anything, it causes more problems than it creates. Especially for those not in the "elite."
That's why they should drop the mechanic. Guilds still raid hours upon hours upon hours to be at the top of the ranks, regardless of the mechanic. And it just creates frustrations for those who simply want to play the game for what it is. And for those who keep saying "We never use all our attempts, so it's fine," you have to look at the bigger picture, not just yourselves. Same goes for hardcore players.
I suppose it's difficult to see other perspectives, unless you've been involved in a variety. So I understand your opinions. I just don't agree with them.