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    TwinStar team

Raid tuning

Maltx

New Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2014
Hey, I recently came across this server and have been thoroughly impressed by the fixes you have implemented in your videos, this looks to be the most advanced vanilla server to date!

I have a question regarding the tuning of end-game raids, an area which in my opinion every 1.12.1 server has failed at so far.

Have you considered addressing the difficulty of entry-mid level raid bosses in patch 1.12.1?

For those of you that have played most/all of the vanilla private servers released in the last 4+ years you would know that raid content tends to fall extremely quickly when it is released. Whether this be from inadequate scripting or content that is simply under-tuned at the core of the game.

1.0.0 (MC/Onyxia), 1.3.0 (Azuregos/Kazzak), 1.6.0 (BWL)
The above content is not tuned for patch 1.12.1 due to:

  • Class talent revamps & skill buffs
  • Buffed stats on 5 man gear (better than most MC loot)
  • Raid boss nerf-bats
On top of this the content is 9 years old, players have gotten significantly better at the game and we have full knowledge on the mechanics/strategy to approach each boss.

This content is designed as an introduction to raiding in WoW for the very first time, been repeatedly nerfed both directly and indirectly (class/gear buffs) and is no longer a learning process (boss tactics/maximizing your classes output). The result is end-game content (before Ahn'Qiraji) that is significantly under-tuned in 2014 patch 1.12.1.

Some of these bosses took weeks on retail until they finally were defeated. Now I'm not expecting to come anywhere close to this on a private server even with perfect scripting, times have changed. However I think it is possible to re-balance some of the earlier raids to provide more of a challenge so that any guild able to fill a 40 man raid doesn't just clear everything released in the first lockout, leaving you with nothing to do for 6+ months until the next raid is released (which you also clear in 1 lockout).

This is not healthy for the long-term interest of the players, harder content would keep players occupied on the current content for longer and less time spent bored on farm mode waiting for the next raid. In my opinion that is more blizzlike than launching patch 1.0-1.6 content in patch 1.12 with zero modifications. Personally I would be absolutely thrilled if Ragnaros was still standing after even 2 raid lockouts (from the first attempt).

Besides your guild won't scream like this if the boss doesn't at least wipe your raid 50 times first :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j2S1d7Igy4&t=4m47s
 
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This won't ever happen. Enough people asked this already. And guys i can promise something it won't be so easy as on other realms even with normal hp and non buffed boss dmg output. Check the issue tracker for thinks like base mechanics like aggro from buffs/debuffs, mana & enegygain. Last but not least, detailed scripted bosses will all mechanics will be way much more challenging as u might excpect it for now!
 
Just recently Chero reworked alot of aggro mechanics. We rechecked if they worked on different realms, they didn't.
Its alot easier to pull aggro and wipe a raid on Kronos. Lets be realistic. In vanilla bosses weren't hard because they two-shot your tank or your party runs oom. They usually were hard because some moron couldn't hold his finger still.

Proper Scripts make up for the usual damage and hp boost that private servers tend to give their bosses.
Additionally the instances like AQ and so on get alot harder to clear with working trash and proper respawns.

MC will be a cake for most guilds, but lets be honest. Thats just how it should be.
 
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Some of these bosses took weeks on retail until they finally were defeated.

#1 Ouro - 87 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 26th April 2006.
#2 C'thun - 86 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 25th April 2006.
#3 tied Chromaggus - 74 days from Ebonroc's death. 25th September 2005.
#3 tied Ragnaros - 74 days from Majordomo Executus' death. 25th April 2005.
#5 Yogg-Saron, Alone in the Darkness - 70 days from Stars' first pull. 7th July 2009
#6 High Astromancer Solarian - 59 days from Magtheridon's death (unlocking the Eye). 24th April 2007
#7 The Four Horsemen - 56 days from Gothik's death to D&T's kill. August 25th 2006
Source

Reason C'thun FK took so long is that he was simply unkillable until various bugs were fixed.

Reason Ouro FK took so long is that he was not the end-boss of AQ40 and all top guilds back then were of course aiming for C'thun first, regardless of bugs that made this practically impossible.

Reason Chromaggus FK took so long is that sands severely limited the amount of proper tries a guild could attempt. Chromaggus is also a very setup sensitive encounter.

Ragnaros was the first real gear check in the game as the fight was several orders of magnitude "harder" than the Domo fight. Also not quite sure whether the World FK actually came before the first Ragnaros nerf as there were multiple.

The Four Horsemen FK took so long simply because of the ridiculous amount of tanks [with the tier 3 taunt hit bonus] they required, as taunt misses almost certainly led to tank deaths and thus wipes.


So what can we expect on Kronos?

Well, Ragnaros will be cake. While the fight is still noticeably harder*** than the Domo fight he has his "post-nerfs" stats/damages. This combined with patch 1.11 gear means he will probably fall within the first or second week that Majordomo has been killed. However what might be interesting to consider is disabling the Majordomo respawn until Ragnaros has been killed for the first time. Meaning Guilds attempting to get the FK will only have two hours to kill him each lockout.*

Chromaggus will also be significantly easier as everybody knows the tactic going in and has better gear available. Nevertheless the amount of Sand available might be a deciding factor in who ends up getting the FK. However I also expect Chromaggus to die within the first week or two after Ebonroc.

C'thun will not be released with any of the bugs he had when he was released on retail (e.g. Tentacles spawning out of line of sight/in the textures), but instead in an actually killable version. This of course means the FK will come a lot quicker than it did on retail. However the retail FK actually came quite soon (one or two weeks) after C'thun was patched, thus making the days unkilled number somewhat misleading.

Ouro will, just as he did on retail, fall quite shortly after C'thun's death. To start counting days unkilled after the Twin Emp FK is again somewhat misleading in this case.

The Four Horsemen will fall quicker for pretty much the same reason Chromaggus did. Guilds will initially do their best to spread the tier 3 loot equally among warriors, to have as many 4/9 T3 as fast as possible. This plus knowing working tactics should lead to a FK after at most a few lockouts.



Does "easier" raid content make the game boring?

No! There will still be races for server first kills. Guilds outside of the top tier will still struggle with a boss every once in a while and will feel the same satisfaction when killing him, regardless if it was "easy" for others.


Is it a good idea to make content harder to simply drag out the Game?

No! People playing Vanilla till this day are here for either some unfinished business, e.g. didn't kill C'thun or cleared Naxx on retail, for the experience of 40 player raids or simply because they think the somewhat more unrefined, rough and even uncontrollably random mechanics make for an more exciting gameplay. [READ: NO FLYING MOUNTS :w00t:]


Will we in Naxxramas after less than a year?

No! While we will be releasing Blackwing Lair quickly, the War Effort before AQ will take months to complete anyway. And afterwards do not expect every guild to rush through AQ40. As posters above me already mentioned, do not expect experiences you may have made on other private servers to be mirrored here on Kronos.


What about the top Guilds, won't they get bored and leave/disband if they have all available content on farm?

No! If we achieve a sufficient server population, expect exciting battles over open world bosses between the top guilds. Also these guilds will need to farm available content for at least a few months to optimize their players gear so they can compete with the servers other high end guilds in the next raid tier.



All in all I am not worried about the content being to easy at all. A lot of the same dynamics that made the game exciting 10 years ago still apply to this day. Making encounters hard so they serve as gatekeepers against a too fast progression will most likely lead to frustration and is in no way conform with our philosophy to try to reproduce the original as close as possible.**


*This is simply a suggestion. Do not take my status as Kronos Team Member as any indication that this is going to happen. Give your feedback and if enough people would welcome a change such as this we might talk this over in the team.
**Baring very few [necessary] exceptions
***lharts: read:gearcheck
 
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Well, form the experience from K2 - Horde guild have been trying to clear BWL for more than 6 months and they still didn't kill Chrom. Even alliance had to clear BWL 3 times to Chrom before they were able to kill him, so the content is not easy even when the classes were boosted.

What i love at vanilla is, that when you make a mistake, it's not the end of the encounter. There are still ways to get from the shit. With every expansion and with smaller raid size, raids become more unforgiving which means - one mistake is wipe. That is not case for Vanilla / most of the TBC.
 
lol this is probably the only server where Chrom is hard since you can't melee nuke him through walls.
 
However what might be interesting to consider is disabling the Majordomo respawn until Ragnaros has been killed for the first time. Meaning Guilds attempting to get the FK will only have two hours to kill him each lockout.*

I don't see why you guys need to interfere to accelerate the progress which should be in our hands.
 
Making encounters hard so they serve as gatekeepers against a too fast progression will most likely lead to frustration.

Frustration was the emotion you felt most of the time back in retail during progression. You're basically taking out one of the biggest key factor of its' nostalgia, the emotion that caused guilds to disbands, raging guild leaders, guild drama. All the stuff we look back at and laugh about.

This makes me sadly believe the raiding experience of this team is non-existant. I hope you and the team re-considers this decision.

When the people in the kill videos, everybody is yelling and cheering of both happiness AND relief of the frustration they've been through up until finally managing to defeat the encounter.
 
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Frustration was the emotion you felt most of the time back in retail during progression. You're basically taking out one of the biggest key factor of its' nostalgia, the emotion that caused guilds to disbands, raging guild leaders, guild drama. All the stuff we look back at and laugh about.

This makes me sadly believe the raiding experience of this team is non-existant. I hope you and the team re-considers this decision.

When the people in the kill videos, everybody is yelling and cheering of both happiness AND relief of the frustration they've been through up until finally managing to defeat the encounter.

I agree. If the content keeps people from killing it because it's impossible (bugged), then the post makes sense, but if it's just difficulty, then frustration and whatnot is all an intended part of the social dynamic, and raiding environment. I wouldn't mind seeing some upscaling depending on how everything pans out in a completely blizzlike environment.

How can anyone except for wrath+ babies be excited about easier content and hand-holding for progression? You have a good thing going... don't mess it up by rushing raid content and progression! I've seen servers where people only raiding MC/Ony, and doing world bosses, were very happy people with small updates like Dire Maul getting released etc (since Dire Maul came after MC/Ony).

Your selling point is your scripts, and with all the hype, community too. You're going to have a lot of people looking at this place as a brand new Kronos, not "K3", so don't worry about pleasing the small group of k1/2 people who want to start off from where they left off too much.
 
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Well, Ragnaros will be cake. While the fight is still noticeably harder*** than the Domo fight he has his "post-nerfs" stats/damages. This combined with patch 1.11 gear means he will probably fall within the first or second week that Majordomo has been killed.

Although you keep saying it will be the first or second week, I think the problem is that in reality it could be the first or second hour after Majordomo has been killed(same goes for BWL). Looking through the patch notes between 1.4 to 1.12 it's obvious that there's an enormous disparity which I would say actually is large enough to trivialize the early content.


Does "easier" raid content make the game boring?

No! There will still be races for server first kills. Guilds outside of the top tier will still struggle with a boss every once in a while and will feel the same satisfaction when killing him, regardless if it was "easy" for others.
It doesn't make the game boring (at least not for everyone) but it does take away some of the joy out of endgame PVE content. Server first kills will then for the most part be decided in a matter of hours to a day or two. All other blizzlike vanilla servers are clear indications of this, and just because they had bugs Kronos won't have or quality of life issues that won't be around this time, I sincerely doubt that will make a huge difference in the progression race since a lot of the content was actually properly scripted in the raids found on other blizzlike servers.


Is it a good idea to make content harder to simply drag out the Game?

No! People playing Vanilla till this day are here for either some unfinished business, e.g. didn't kill C'thun or cleared Naxx on retail, for the experience of 40 player raids or simply because they think the somewhat more unrefined, rough and even uncontrollably random mechanics make for an more exciting gameplay.

While I'm in no position to speak for everyone I think most of us are here to re-experience/experience the game as it was in its early days. That doesn't mean people want to clear things fast just so they can move on with their life, it means they want to experience it as it was.


The boss difficulty in vanilla was not some artificial barrier, it was a part of how the game was designed. And without being able to provide a somewhat similar difficulty I fear we're missing out on a significant part of how the end-game in vanilla was designed and meant to be played. Challenge brings satisfaction and can help guild rosters to bond.

We have seen a recurring problem with content difficulty on previous vanilla private servers(blizzlike) and perhaps we now could learn from their mistake and try to address those problems.

Cheers.
 
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Holy Scripture.

Keep preaching, my friend.

The more the difficulty of the content is raised, the better.
Most people attracted to vanilla servers are of the hardcore and those who enjoyed the struggling and relief they experienced, and sorry if I may be wrong but I find this intention of making things easier
or heavy casualizing vanilla is just bizarre. And if you believe it will make the
server more attractive it will actually do the EXACT opposite.

By increasing difficulty of content, of course the more frustration, but frustration quickly turns into motivation, to defeat the encounter.

The more frustration, the more motivation, the bigger the relief.
And that's why players crave vanilla, as those moments are most memorable.
And if this project is unable or fails to deliver this, it will set atleast not a good
reputation for the project, and the server will probably or most likely exodus.

And as I stated previously. It really, REALLY seems like none in this project team has any form of retail vanilla raiding experience at all.

Please do not burry your own grave before even launching the server.
 
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Keep preaching, my friend.

And as I stated previously. It really, REALLY seems like none in this project team has any form of retail vanilla raiding experience at all.

Please do not burry your own grave before even launching the server.

Are you delusional? :wheelchair:
 
I clearly understand that you want to progress Ragnaros for months, but belive me, it realy CAN happen. Ofc the best guilds will kill him in first two weeks but rest will progress him hardly for a month or two.

There are two things, that Devs can do to increase difficulty - custom scripts, which nobody want or damage increase, which will make the encounter just a gear check. It will not be like in days before - "Hey guys, focus, do what you should do, and we will do it" and then rage when something goes wrong. With dmg increase it will be like "OK, let's try it... Oh, 7k to tank, OK, we don't have gear, lets come back month later". That's not fun either.

On 1.12.1, you can't reproduce the exact feeling from the 1.4.0, because classes have changed. You have more and better abilities at your disposal, but you still have relatively same stats. So when you increase damage, you just increase the amount of neccessary gear.
 
I clearly understand that you want to progress Ragnaros for months, but belive me, it realy CAN happen. Ofc the best guilds will kill him in first two weeks but rest will progress him hardly for a month or two.

There are two things, that Devs can do to increase difficulty - custom scripts, which nobody want or damage increase, which will make the encounter just a gear check. It will not be like in days before - "Hey guys, focus, do what you should do, and we will do it" and then rage when something goes wrong. With dmg increase it will be like "OK, let's try it... Oh, 7k to tank, OK, we don't have gear, lets come back month later". That's not fun either.

On 1.12.1, you can't reproduce the exact feeling from the 1.4.0, because classes have changed. You have more and better abilities at your disposal, but you still have relatively same stats. So when you increase damage, you just increase the amount of neccessary gear.

I never implied custom, but stating nobody wants it is ignorance.
As long as it is pulled off/executed correctly, it's passable. As shown by
Arena-Tournament's experimenting, regardless wether it's PvP.

As players have more and better abilities at their disposals, I don't think
most people would mind bosses having some abilities added to their spell
pool to increase difficulty. It's harmless, depending on how much new things
the player has to learn. If anything it would be healthy and provide an improved
experience if anything.

I thank you for reminding me of that.
 
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On 1.12.1, you can't reproduce the exact feeling from the 1.4.0, because classes have changed.

None of the dungeons nor raids will be rollbacked. Everything will be as on 1.12.1.



I don't think
most people would mind bosses having some abilities added to their spell
pool to increase difficulty..


Custom is not blizzlike and if you add new abilities for ragnaros, its nor more a normal ragnaros, worse feeling than on feenix man.

... ?
 
I'm against any custom additions to how they work as in adding abilities or increasing frequency of abilities, if someone with good statistical skills could try to make an approximation of how much more output players can provide today then perhaps the bosses could be buffed by a specified percentage to accommodate for that.

Output damage from spells is also another possibility to buff, for example on specific spells like the AoE effect of "Living Bomb", it won't fundamentally change the encounter but it will encourage players to follow tactics more carefully as the penalty for failing to do so will increase.

If you go through the patch notes carefully you will also see there have been various nerfs to encounters, moderately in 40-mans and a lot of them in 20-mans, perhaps that could be something worth looking into.


One more thing, although it will be hard to nerf player abilities, there is one change that can be reversed early in the game and that is caster gear didn't have spell power in the early tiers, as a consequence of the added spell power casters does a lot more DPS in the early tiers than what they did on retail. There exists a book that contains all these items prior to the huge buff, so this change should in theory be possible to reverse(for the relevant tiers until it gets buffed again later on).
 
Custom is not blizzlike and if you add new abilities for ragnaros, its nor more a normal ragnaros, worse feeling than on feenix man.

... ?

Depends on what you define "Blizzlike". Wether it's copying retail literally 100%, or aiming to provide a retail feeling of WoW in terms of gameplay, services and quality.

Changes that are subtle changes and quality-of-life changes that won't hurt the feeling of the gameplay.
Anything can be improved as it does not go against the definition of "Blizzlike".

If it's custom it's not "blizzlike"? Would you consider a project such as CoreCraft "custom"?
As they change the bosses to pre-nerfed state, implements Patch 1.9' Alterac Valley, etc.

The gameplay by default is filled with big flaws, and there's always room for improvement that does not ruin the original feeling of the gameplay but improves it.

Don't judge the food before you've tasted it.

I'm not aware wether I'm allowed to link other private server forums and I'm sorry if it's not allowed, but this is a very good discussion about the arguement at hand:
https://www.worldofcorecraft.com/content/definition-blizzlike

- - - Updated - - -

One more thing, although it will be hard to nerf player abilities, there is one change that can be reversed early in the game and that is caster gear didn't have spell power in the early tiers, as a consequence of the added spell power casters does a lot more DPS in the early tiers than what they did on retail. There exists a book that contains all these items prior to the huge buff, so this change should in theory be possible to reverse(for the relevant tiers until it gets buffed again later on).

Like the Silithus gear added in Patch 1.9
 
I dont know if this will be accepted. But after it is accepted and gets changed, other poeple like me will come and say "Bro what about this and that which was removed and changed before 1.12.1, i want that too, its so much fun and so on"

I know stuff that was implemented and changed/removed before 1.12.1, so you will get a huge atombomb of question about other stuff.

Because you are interested more in changes regarding Raiddungeons, you should be aware that there are people who are interested more in other things who will probably want to have that changed too :)
 
I dont know if this will be accepted. But after it is accepted and gets changed, other poeple like me will come and say "Bro what about this and that which was removed and changed before 1.12.1, i want that too, its so much fun and so on"

I know stuff that was implemented and changed/removed before 1.12.1, so you will get a huge atombomb of question about other stuff.

Because you are interested more in changes regarding Raiddungeons, you should be aware that there are people who are interested more in other things who will probably want to have that changed too :)

I think there exists a threshold that makes the divide whether a change is trivial or not, the proposed changes and implications of this is huge, hence why this is a recurring issue that a lot of players cares about. There are many small changes that could be suggested as well, but just because something like this gets through doesn't mean anyone is entitled to force developers to implement whatever they want them to.

However, if you know something that got changed later on in the game and you would like to see it back, why don't you bring it up? There's always a chance this is something the devs (and us players) would like to see as well.
 
Changes that are subtle changes and quality-of-life changes that won't hurt the feeling of the gameplay.
this yes
Anything can be improved as it does not go against the definition of "Blizzlike".
this no

Adding abilities to bosses is something you will not see this on Kronos. I can absolutely assure you of this. As can be seen by the experience rates conundrum we can not cater to everyone's wishes and decisions have to be made. If the content is not challenging enough for you then that is simply that.

Reverting gear to stats of previous patches is also not going to happen. This would open a can of worms as talents would have to be the logical next thing on the chopping block.

Of course there will be minor QoL changes such as Chests using Group Loot Rules which was introduced in early TBC and even though we are releasing with talents and gear at a 1.12.1 state we will be holding content such as Cenarion Hold/Twilight Camps/Silithids or the D2 chain back until the appropriate time.

Also the comparison with CC and TBC is in my opinion somewhat lacking as EVERY raid tier in TBC received not so subtle nerfs after a certain amount of time had expired. This was not necessarily the case in classic as a lot of the nerfs were simply bringing game mechanics in line with their intention. Also the way CC is implementing their raids does for me not fall outside of the blizzlike* spectrum. The difference here on Kronos is that we will aim for a 1.12.1 blizzlike with gradually released raid content and minor QoL improvements.


The gameplay by default is filled with big flaws, and there's always room for improvement that does not ruin the original feeling of the gameplay but improves it.

As Intra already said, if you have suggestions feel free to bring them up.

*a word that sadly leaves room for too much interpretation
 
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How are patches prior to 1.12? I believe something like this has no chance of happening and I apologize for my lack of knowledge, since I have no idea how vanilla evolved in terms of patches. But what would it look like? If the server started on an earlier patch? Where encounters werent really nerfed yet, how would that look? I am realy curious
 
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