Raiding and Decision Making

I just spent some time reading a brilliant discussion on the Elitist Jerks forums concerning raiding theory and approaches toward dealing with raids. (http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t41700-raiding_theory/ )

This thread got the ol juices flowing in my head about raids within WoW, I'll be honest, my non-Wow raiding experience is limited, but as wow is the current gold standard for... well... everything MMO related, I feel comfortable discussing the topic.

Early in the thread, the typical formula for addressing an encounter as a player is defined as follows "1) Develop. 2) practice. 3) kill." I think is pretty accurate. Looking at raids from a player's perspective, the general conceptual ideas when dealing with an encounter within the game are fairly limited. There isn't a whole lot of thought or decision making that happens during encounters within WoW, as much as it's about memorizing the appropriate reaction to whatever the boss is doing. This approach and playstyle is acceptable within WoW, and it works. Anyone who's done any raiding, whether on the edge of content, or just been pulled through by 39 (yes 39, I miss the bigger raids) more knowledgeable players can tell you that knowing the fight is the path to victory. Humans are interesting creatures, by nature we define goals and where we want to be. The issue is that today's society of apathy and entitlement has led us into a position where we all know what we want, and when we want it (now!), but we all expect someone to tell us how to get there, rather than figuring it out ourselves. None of us can say we are immune to this, It's just so much easier to say "I want to be an astronaut." and get a reply of "OK! Let's go to space camp." Rather than spending the time figuring out how, on your own, to be an astronaut.

The later two steps of the aforementioned three step process to addressing raid encounters is exactly that, it's a set of instructions that the masses can blindly follow to obtain a desired result. I know, that every time I put a dollar in this machine, I'm going to get a soda. I have my desired result and clear instructions or previous knowledge on how to obtain this. The trick with this is the first step, the development. Once you have that ice cold soda in your hands, you have no concern what-so-ever with how it worked, who cares? I got my result, I'm happy. The development of this "how" is what separates the professionals from the consumers. This is very clear within the WoW community. There are a handful of cutting edge guilds that spend the time figuring out the gimmicks and the steps to the dance, once the equation is solved, they mass produce the results via videos and strategies to the rest of the world. Once the syndication of the answer happens, the rest of the world simply practices group1's dance steps, scoops loot, and walks away happy. The question is: is this fun?

I've been raiding in WoW since bandages were mobile,Teir 1 and 2 were un-completeable, and Shazzrah forgot to talent into blink. In the beginning, guilds heralded strategies and didn't share their tactics. This, in large, comes from the mentalities of Everquest. Without instances, competition for raid bosses became an issue. Based on this, having a strategy to dispatch the boss was of the utmost importance, as it gave you a leg up on others attempting to claim the loot. Equally important was the need for secrecy. Giving up your strategy was a poor move, as you'd be giving away your edge. Raiding in WoW soon after launch was a completely different game from what we see today. 'Step 1) Develop' was a raid-wide task. A raid night wasn't about learning the dance moves, it was about figuring out the moves.

I remember my first venture into Molten Core, everyone with their shiny blues. The first mob destroyed us. We had no preconceived notions about how to handle it, or what the mob was going to do; we were 100% winging it. The Forelord spewed Lava spawns and we off tanked them. This sounds insane to anyone who's been into Molten Core, but with no idea what we were getting into, we forced ourselves to react, learn, and develop. There was nobody on our realm to seek advice from, no websites with all of the answers, we figured it out on our own. These sleepless nights in college led to some of the most rewarding and fulfilling encounters I've ever experienced. Working together with a group of people toward a mutual goal and everything coming together resulting in victory is a feeling I can't begin to explain. Going in with absolutely nothing, and molding the group into what the situation called for completely on the fly is a beautiful thing.

The strategists here are the minds behind it all. They are forced to reverse engineer the equation. They know the intended result, they also know the input they must use to obtain that result, the question is how to make it work. How do I turn this dollar bill, into a cold drink? How do I turn this group of 25 people (yes, I gave in) into a dead boss? Asking the question alone can cause a myriad of thoughts to rush through anyone's head. This is where, in my opinion, the most fun is truly derived. This, of course, hinges on your definitions of fun, but MMO games are about far, far more than simply 'pure fun' (should that get it's own topic? Hmm).

Being a former guild leader, I've had my fair share of raid-wide brainstorming sessions, as well as memorization of the song and dance. Once guilds realized that sharing their strategies didn't give the rest of the world an advantage over them, it became the way to show your superiority to the rest of the world. It no longer became about who killed the boss first, but who released the first strat video. At this point, the only way to appease a guild of people foaming at the mouth for loot was to facilitate their desire to have this loot now and not spend countless hours solving the puzzle that we can find the answers to online in 30 seconds.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to get to here, is that the first phase of a player approach to successful raiding is the most enjoyable and fulfilling. It also happens to be the one that reaches the smallest audience and is the hardest to design for. It's also risky. With such a massive audience that WoW has, it's obscenely difficult to try and keep some of the players happy, let alone most players, and just flat out impossible to keep them all happy. This approach can be seen as something the developers have respectfully tried to tackle. Players in WoW have options most other MMO games haven't even dreamed of. Do you want to PvP? OK! Arena, Battleground, World, or duel? OK, which battleground do you want? Oh! You want to PvE, great. 5 man? 10 man? 25 man? Normal? Heroic? Hard mode? I mean, you have to respect the developers attempt to give the players everything they want.

With the options available, I'm interested to see an option that dives more into the first phase of the raiding formula. I believe this phase to be the strongest as well as the most progressive. Let's give our players a situation that a strategy can't answer for them. Instead of saying "These dance moves will always result in a victory." Let's say "Here is the tools, go to work." I think that this is an area that the Developers have tried to dabble in. The Nefarian fight in Blackwing Lair comes to mind (I know it's old content). Yes, there were formulas that ensured easy victory, but there was also a level of forced reaction and brainpower needed on the part of the player if playing the encounter without Battle Shout (buff aggro ftw). The initial phase where the colors of the drakonoids were unknown would lead players to address it in one of two ways: to accept a wipe and identify the colors, thus allowing strategy to be put together. Or to setup your tanks, and tell your dps'ers to react and go to the appropriate color once they are discovered. Giving the majority of your raid one decision, just one, allowed for the raid wide feeling of confidence to be taken to a new level. I'll never forget the first time my guild tried it, we gave it a few seconds, made the call, dps fanned out accordingly, and we won. It was incredible, after a few weeks, it wasn't even a spoken strategy. People identified the decision, and made it. Whether they made the correct or incorrect decision, it was THEIR decision, they made it, and they likely won't make the same one twice.

We can see further exploration of this within the Prince Malchezaar encounter. This one is infamous as being a hated encounter. Why? Because it forced player thought. There was no define steps to take in order to resolve the issue. Every encounter was unique, this required players to not only have somewhat of a plan, but to make decisions as a group to ensure success. The result was millions of wipes, and strategies that border on exploitation using the door. Despite the resistance to it, actually completing the encounter legitimately, without praying for "good infernals" was a rush. Groups that were capable of doing were, unfortunately, few and far between, but pulling it off once where everyone moves correctly and experiencing the elegance of the encounter was amazingly fulfilling.

Moving forward, I hope to see more of this in future raiding content. With the introduction of hard modes, and the proper incentives to complete hard modes, this is something that developers can start to foster and grow within the playerbase. Normal mode encounters would require the raid to memorize the dance steps, while hard mode requires a bit of decision making and logic.

A great way to do this is by the introduction of random elements. A random element completes a few different key objectives. The most impactful being, that random elements give players the opportunity to make decisions. As stated above (you thought I was just rambling huh?) random elements include an inherent risk of frustrating players. With the introduction of 'hard mode' encounters, I feel that this is an acceptable risk. Hard mode is clearly not for everyone, hard modes ask for more from the player in turn providing the player with a greater payoff for success. Let's stick with the previous example of Prince Malchezaar. Normal mode for the encounter features roughly the same mechanics, only the infernals drop in a predictable pattern. This would allow for the 'going through the motions' approach for your average casual players, while still maintaining the random mechanic for the advanced players in search of greater reward. Of course, for this fight specifically some additional tweaks would be required (infernal damage on normal = low, hard = huge. Hard mode spawns extra axes, etc, etc) but this would provide the players seeking the extra gratification and more in-depth experience an opportunity to not only overcome greater challenges, but to be forced to think, and be rewarded for thinking.

In conclusion, I think that the recent developments we're seeing out of WoW are a step in the right direction with raids. Making them high accessible for the masses, but providing the advanced players an envelope to push. It's been a long time in the making, and I think it still has a lot of growth left to do, but letting the players decide their pace, in-turn selecting their rewards is a direction towards success. Let's hope that the future patches take this to the next level, and that the players passionate about the problem solving aspects get their fill.