Breakfast Topic: Would the Raid Finder difficulty approach work for 5-man instances?
by Josh Myers 
Dec 17th 2011 at 8:00AM
Assuming this works and everyone remains happy with the Raid Finder system, is there a future for the Raid Finder model in the Dungeon Finder system? We know now that Blizzard has entirely revamped the 5-man system in Mists of Pandaria, offering new PvE encounter zones, timed instance runs, and no normal versions of level 85 heroic dungeons.
But what if Blizzard decided to follow the Raid Finder system instead and redesigned 5-mans with three tiers of difficulty? The first tier, the Dungeon Finder mode, would be designed to be easy enough that five puggers with no voice chat could queue for it and win. Normal mode would require five dedicated players working in coordination with one another but would still ultimately be easily conquerable without significant effort. Heroic modes would require hours of wiping, retuning of strats, and a dedicated group of players.
It's very likely that this is an impossible dream, that it's not really possible to design a heroic Ragnaros-style boss encounter that is as difficult for five players to kill. It might not be possible because 5-man groups have such varied compositions that certain buff and debuff compositions would make balancing an exercise in futility.
Excluding balance issues, would you play it? Would you prefer the option of being able to fight heroic Ragnaros with your four closest friends, knowing that it took just as much effort as a 25-man kill of the same fight? Would you rather leave raiding to raids themselves and keep 5-mans as they are now? Or are you looking forward to Mists of Pandaria and the new model of 5-man encounters we're going to be playing?
Filed under: Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Imnick Dec 17th 2011 8:05AM
Normal mode isn't even that far from LFR difficulty, if they boosted every dungeon up to have an 85 version and then added an even harder mode it would make more sense.
I'd rather they didn't though, it's a waste of development time that could be spent on other things. Heroics don't really need that much tweaking.
Rezai Dec 17th 2011 8:16AM
I'd love it if it worked, sadly based on my numorous wipes on the recent Zandalari dungeons (I'm looking at you Jin'do the PUGbreaker) I'm going to say no. As long as tanks have insta-queues (healers almost insta-queues) I don't see any of them staying around more than one or two wipes. I hope I'm wrong though.
SamLowry Dec 17th 2011 9:18AM
Impossibly hard heroics...hmm, sounds exactly like why I quit the game for a few months at the beginning of the year. The only way to get any decent gear was to grind heroics but they were impossible to complete unless you already had awesome gear. Anyone at Blizzard ever read Catch-22?
The Twilight 3 are actually much better (and shorter) than those disasters (even now) and I'd like to keep it that way, so I vote no.
Methuus Dec 17th 2011 10:11AM
I think you kind of missed his point, it wouldn't be "hard 5mans" it would be "5mans with 3 difficulty levels".
If you were queuing up in dungeon finder (ie. a PUG), you would only get the easiest level of difficulty.
You'd only be able to access the harder difficulty levels by putting together a premade group and deliberately choosing the harder modes (like raids work now).
Mycroft Dec 17th 2011 8:18AM
"no normal versions of level 85 heroic dungeons"
I remember hearing something said during BlizzCon, but I took it to mean there would be no designed-for-level-cap normal mode dungeons. Cata had the three level 84 normal dungeons that required grinding to get gear to qualify you for heroics (but lots 'cheated' in with pvp gear anyway), I took their statement to mean they wouldn't have that.
Is there a statement elsewhere that says that their "leveling" dungeons would not have level cap heroic versions?
Anyway, they are implementing another difficulty than what we have now, maybe that would suffice for ultra-hard, and since it scales ilvl, can't be out-geared.
Necromann Dec 17th 2011 1:44PM
I took what was said at Blizzcon to mean that you would not be normal modes that were tuned for lvl 90's.
loop_not_defined Dec 17th 2011 3:36PM
All 85-90 leveling dungeons will have level 90 Heroic versions, but there will not be any level 90 Normal dungeons. I'm assuming there will be some Heroic-only dungeons at release, since 5 levels doesn't really give a lot of room for leveling dungeons.
razion Dec 17th 2011 8:18AM
Essentially what this boils down to is renaming normal dungeons LFD dungeons, making Heroics "normal" dungeons, and then adding a new harder level of difficulty for people who, I guess, would like to have raiding experiences in dungeons--which I guess amounts to difficulty. And if that's true, then we're already GETTING this system in Mists of Pandaria:
Dungeon Challenges. Faster runs get you medals which get you different rewards, and like raiding you are ranked among your realm and so on and are rewarded for the effort you put in. It's the same thing, really.
DarkWalker Dec 17th 2011 11:42AM
The challenge modes have a few extra features.
First, gear normalization; thus, a level playing field for everyone. Coupled with the promised ladder, this means the top spot is never safe - someone can climb to it way after the challenge mode was introduced - contrary to what happens with world firsts.
(For this alone, I will pay way more attention to a player's challenge mode ladder spot than to his raiding achievements. A player can get raid achievs by getting carried or overgearing it; the same will not be possible with challenge modes.)
Also, groups that are already beating the hardest timed challenge get the chance to try it again, but with a gear debuff (i.e., even higher difficulty). Beat the hardest challenge again, and you can increase the difficulty even more. While the mechanics won't change, this means challenge modes can increase their difficulty to be as high as the players are able to beat, and then a little.
DragonFireKai Dec 17th 2011 8:24AM
Fairly difficult on Normal Mode? Is that why more raids completely cleared the instance the first week it was available than any raid tier in history with the exception of the dreaded ToC?
Noyou Dec 17th 2011 8:36AM
Let's keep LFR just for raids a little longer. I mean, we have had it for 3 weeks now? They already said you will have challenge mode for MoP. So I think it is safe to assume that the MoP heroics will be more like Wrath Heroics and less like Cata. I am not even a casual dungeon runner but I think the time and resources could be better placed elsewhere than on having 3 tiers of dungeons. For raids it's about getting many, many more people to see content than previously. I just don't think for 5-mans you would have the same bang for the buck as with LFR.
Redielin Dec 17th 2011 8:37AM
Bad idea. The loot would be pretty much worthless. For better or for worse, 5 mans need to provide loot that is a relevant baseline for the current content, and they need to do so in about 30 minutes. Raid Finder works because it provides relevant content and loot in between normal raiding and 5 mans, which makes it perfect for casual main and alts who have exhausted their options in 5 mans.
There's no customer base for "LFR" level difficulty in 5 mans, everyone would graduate out.
The other option, making Heroic Modes on par in difficulty and loot with raiding heroic modes, will either mean no one runs 5 man heroics, or very, very few people do heroic mode raiding, depending on how they are tuned. This was sort of what we had going in BC, and Blizzard decided to make the loot not worth the difficulty, and therefore most people just skipped most of the heroics once they got what they needed.
spindoc16 Dec 17th 2011 8:37AM
And did you cleared them as well, DragonFireKai ?
DragonFireKai Dec 17th 2011 10:15AM
Yes, we have, and we've cleaned up normal mode faster than we have any tier since ToC.
And we're not the only ones. A hair under 10,000 guilds have killed Deathwing on normal difficulty, less than three weeks into the tier.
it took just under two months for the 10,000th rag kill to get punched in firelands.
it took three months for the 10,000th nefarian kill in T11.
It took two months for the 10k Lich King kill to be logged.
it took two months for 10k yogg kills in ulduar.
While I don't havecomprehensive numbers for the BC era raids, I would find it difficult to believe that they were being killed significantly quicker than modern raid tiers.
The risk blizzard is running is creating another ToC. Another raid that everyone farms on normal for months, and while actually being one of the easier tiers on heroic difficulty as well, the complete lack of a challenge in normal mode will leave a lot of players who aren't capable of heroic raiding being stuck in a limbo where all content they can clear is trivial, and all content they haven't cleared is hopelessly out of reach. Only instead of simply tiding us over until the final tier of the expansion, this IS the final tier of the expansion, the tier we're going to have to live with for the better part of a full year while we wait for MoP to come out. They basically gave us ICC, without the gating, with half the wings, and the 30% buff already in place.
Dr. Rocketscience Dec 17th 2011 12:30PM
Is there, you know, a point coming anytime soon? And does it in any way relate to the topic at hand? Or are you just an mmo hipster? TOR is full of those right now...
Imnick Dec 19th 2011 6:08PM
You do know that a fair few of those instances you listed were gated, right?
gazhaze3 Dec 17th 2011 9:01AM
i think they would be better of making lfr for the other 85 raids where people would like to do but couldn't do for whatever reason
how many people would like to have gone into firelands.
Adam Dec 17th 2011 9:12AM
I could see the benefit of having a LFD difficulty/ilevel.
But we technically have that now, it's just in the form of a luck of the draw buff. So rather than devote countless hours fine tuning and retweaking encounters, that was Blizzard's fix.
What they could potentially do to encourage/promote guild runs, is make the ilevel change based on the Luck of the Draw buff.
So for example, you queue for a random by yourself, you get a dungeon with the Luck of the Draw, loot level would be say 346.
You queue for a random with 4 people you know from your server, no Luck of the Draw buff if present, loot level would be better, like 353.
Lastly, you could then queue with 4 people you know from your server, and have an option to change the difficulty at that point to heroic mode, run a five man instance, and get loot level 359.
Heroic mode could increase boss health by 15-20%, and damage output by bosses by 15-20%.
But the problem would ultimately be having to run with people you don't know, so you could get gear to run with people you do know, and then running that content into the ground as you try to get the BiS gear.
Sounds like seeing too much of the same content...much like now...
Tnttodda Dec 17th 2011 12:21PM
I would love it if they did this. None-pug heroics would rock!
Methuus Dec 17th 2011 10:16AM
Well, you tried to exclude the big problem at the end of your post. But I do think that the reason this wouldn't work would be balance.
With only at most 5 of the 11 classes represented (and possibly even fewer), designing challenging encounters that didn't require certain functions would be pretty much impossible.
Like: "oops, we've only got one interrupter, we can't do this fight", or "what do you mean we don't have anyone who can CC dragonkin?", etc, etc
I mean, this is one of the reasons why LFR is 25man instead of 10.