Flexible Raid Lock System in 4.0.1

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Flexible Raid Lock System in 4.0.1

Originally Posted by Bashiok (Source)
Almost six months ago we announced that Cataclysm raids were being redesigned to make both raid sizes the same difficulty, drop the same quality of loot, and exist in the same lockout. This evolution in raid philosophy is built on the belief that the size of your raiding group should be a choice based solely on what's more fun and enjoyable for you, and that you should not have to complete the same raiding content twice in a week to maximize your character's progression. These systems are the culmination of a great deal of design and player feedback from the last few years. With the release of the 4.0.1 patch, the new Flexible Raid Lock system will debut in Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum.

With the Flexible Raid Lock system, instead of being locked to a specific raid size or raid group, each character will have the opportunity to defeat each raid encounter once a week. You could kill Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper with a 10-player raid on Wednesday, join a 25-player raid to kill Festergut and Rotface on Thursday, and then lead a completely new 10-player raid to kill The Lich King on Friday. Every raid has a list of encounters associated with the zone. For example, Icecrown Citadel has twelve encounters. After you defeat Lord Marrowgar, you can open up your character's raid information dialog and see the list of encounters in Icecrown Citadel with Marrowgar marked as defeated. You may no longer fight Lord Marrowgar with any raid size or difficulty until the weekly raid reset for your region occurs.

Another key change is that if you join someone else's raid in progress, you are no longer locked to that raid after merely zoning in. Your raid status will only change when a boss is defeated, at which point it will be updated to reflect the state of the instance in which you are currently participating. So, let's say you have killed the first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel, and you then join a raid that has defeated the first four encounters, as well as Festergut and Rotface. The dialog that displays upon entering Icecrown Citadel will show that the raid has defeated 6 of 12 encounters. If you help them defeat Professor Putricide, then you would be marked as having defeated not only Professor Putricide for the week, but also Festergut and Rotface. If instead after joining the raid you then proceeded to wipe ten times to Professor Putricide, you could leave the raid with only the first four bosses marked as completed.

To help communicate to players which bosses are dead in the raid leader's raid, there is new functionality to link in chat a list of the encounters the raid has defeated. So before you join a raid, you can see what they've already defeated. If a raid leader advertises in chat that she needs another healer for an 8/12 Icecrown Citadel run, you can see precisely which bosses are still available to fight. If you were only looking for that one item from Queen Lana'thel that never drops for you and this raid already defeated her, you will know not to join that raid.

Let's look at another example of the Flexible Raid Lock system. A guild schedules three nights for 25-player Icecrown Citadel raiding on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Wednesday, the raid defeats Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Saurfang. On Thursday, five people cancel their raid attendance due to real life emergencies. The raid leader knows that if he cancels Thursday raiding, there's little chance they'll have enough time on Saturday to defeat the other eight bosses in Icecrown Citadel. So he splits the remaining 20 Thursday raiders into two 10-player raids. Each new raid enters Icecrown Citadel and defeats Rotface, Festergut, Blood Council, and Valithria Dreamwalker. The next Saturday with all 25 players online, they reform as a 25-player raid and enter Icecrown Citadel once more. Only Professor Putricide, Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and The Lich King remain. After a tough fight, the Lich King falls and everybody celebrates. Without the Flexible Raid Lock system the entire raid probably would have missed out on a night of raiding, and likely would not have reached the Lich King.

While players can freely move between raids of different sizes in normal difficulty, there are some additional rules for Heroic difficulty. If a 10- or 25-player raid defeats a boss on Heroic difficulty, then those players may now only raid additional Heroic encounters with that specific raid. If your Heroic 25-player raid defeats the first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel on Heroic, then they may not split up into two 10-player raids and continue to fight in Heroic difficulty. You may also not join someone else's raid if they have defeated a Heroic encounter.

But let's say you are a member of a Heroic raid in Icecrown Citadel, and after killing Lord Marrowgar on Heroic you have Internet connection issues that prevent you from raiding for two nights. During those two nights, the rest of the raid kills everything. Without the Flexible Raid Lock system, you would be done with raiding Icecrown Citadel for the week. Ouch. With the Flexible Raid Lock system, you can join someone else's raid as long as they are doing Normal difficulty. This would at least give you the opportunity to earn your Justice Points for the week. If this raid attempted to switch to Heroic difficulty for Icecrown Gunship Battle with you in the raid, the raid leader would receive an error message stating that she cannot change to Heroic, because someone in the raid (i.e., you) is already locked to a different Heroic instance.

All of the new Cataclysm raids will feature the Flexible Raid Lock and Dynamic Difficulty systems, and when the Cataclysm occurs the other Wrath of the Lich King raids will also have these features. It's important to note that this system doesn't affect Heroic dungeons, they will work as they always have. We look forward to feedback for this new system after 4.0.1 is released. As a reminder, Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum are the only two raids that support the Flexible Raid Lock until the Cataclysm occurs.






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While players can freely move between raids of different sizes in normal difficulty, there are some additional rules for Heroic difficulty. If a 10- or 25-player raid defeats a boss on Heroic difficulty, then those players may now only raid additional Heroic encounters with that specific raid. If your Heroic 25-player raid defeats the first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel on Heroic, then they may not split up into two 10-player raids and continue to fight in Heroic difficulty. You may also not join someone else's raid if they have defeated a Heroic encounter.
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lol Seems like that will be pretty key, and is stupid as hell in my opinion.
 
The rest of it kind of makes sense but that bit is retarded. Why would you force people to attempt the whole place on heroic?
 
pretty sure it doesn't mean that. just that you can't split off into 10s groups and continue doing heroics from there, as it says. can still do normal or heroic in the first instance for each boss as you wish
 
You can only do heroics in the same save.

Shoulda had LK long time ago anyways, casual raiding sucks. :p
 
So does malleable goo hawn! Mr 50latency
 
Imo..This will kill pugs
A. <---wants all the raids i can only plays AND pays to raid now i get no options gg blizz(maybe i only get to pay half too)
B.trying to find 2 ppl on the server at the same save(sure you can skip bossers cause you only pay to kill them) in pacth 4.5 will be a nightmare sure sounds easy with one raid..but when theres 4-5 raids
C.Guild talents + only 1 save just about means if i wanted to raid on any alt i would have to join a guild.(and when like i said i play to raid and only raid i have quite a number of alts i run weekly for fun)
D.Just another way for a casual raider to get carried.(some clown bails his back in trade 30 secs later looking for some other pug to fuck up)
E.**But let's say you are a member of a Heroic raid in Icecrown Citadel, and after killing Lord Marrowgar on Heroic you have Internet connection issues that prevent you from raiding for two nights. During those two nights, the rest of the raid kills everything. Without the Flexible Raid Lock system, you would be done with raiding Icecrown Citadel for the week. Ouch. With the Flexible Raid Lock system, you can join someone else's raid** !!!WTF!!! so i now look out of guild to carry ppl but under there guild rules maybe pug guilds??
F.system is shit made by some clown who raided 1 day a week and who likes to quest im sure of it.
G.Just my 2 cents!!
H.I'm Renaming it to **Unflexible raid lock system**(could the name be anymore misleading,flexible for baddies who leave raids and casual guilds that had 20 ppl not the other 90% of mainstream players)
 
It's crap. No more pugs less badges /points
 
lol goo is easy
i was trying to avoid it like a slickster to heal more
learned my lesson
whatevs

I think and hope its gonna be better than we expect josh.

Maybe we'll see some PuGs that i remember when the game was first out, people paid a lot more attention, was still plenty of baddies of course. :p
Theres also still new first time level 80s every single day, its crazy.

what was i saying?
 
hmmm... i think guild will need to make a stand for heroic LK for this coming patch.
whether they want everyone to gain some experience in 10s version first or just go straight into 25s.

i really like this flexi raid lock, and i think it will not kill pug/casual for normal raid.

let's say in CATA, using ICC as an example, a pug join a casual/pug normal 25s for 4/12 (pretty common), then continue this up to 6/12 for normal 10s (pretty common too), and LFG a uber group to attempt the remaining bosses in 10s. if you got lucky, maybe some heroics also.

i tend to agree that if you wanna raid heroic, you better join a guild kinda idea. and if you are already on heroic, you won't be looking at normal loots anyway (unless you needed the justice point). even if you need the points, you can continue it in normal 10s, which is pretty cool.

bout the heroic lock between 10s and 25s, it seems better that guild go for heroic 10s first, then combine to do heroic 25s, which again this make sense to me.

denial, stop teasing hawn. your 4k dps is not helping either. :p
 
Note that there was an extra clarification posted here - ICC 10s and 25s will still have separate raid locks.
One piece of clarification on questions being asked so far, although we're still compiling feedback and will work to answer some of the questions and clear up any confusion we can.

The loot system in Icecrown and Ruby Sanctum is not changing. This implementation of the new flex raid lock is only that, a new implementation of the raid lockout system we'll be using in Cataclysm. This does not change the separation of 10 and 25 in ICC, and does not change the item drops or achievements.
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LOL
ghostclawer himself could not talk me into liking this unfilxaible raid system.

My biggest disapointment locked to 10 and 25 yes i can swicth bewteen but no matter what way you sugar coat it cuts my raid time in 2

So many guilds will fall apart.just like trillie said ppl will want to do 10s 1st...25/2 does not =10..yay for spilting raid teams sure we will not have a case just like Wotlk where 1 group stacks better then the rest and ppl like myself cant make either.

And say doing 4/12 and looking to continue with better groups works for 6 months,then where like now the 25 pug i jon friday clears a few H bossers and stop and 10/12 im left looking for a group to kill 2 bossers for the rest of the week.thats 1 option not options like i would have at running a 10

I stress the point i play to raid,now i must lvl ten 80's to see the same raid time my 5 get now.
 
lol vye you misread that, methinks ;) raid locks will be shared, just loot/achievements etc etc all remaining separate for icc/rs, unlike in cata

and agreed josh.. it's just retarded..
 
Change for change's sake is not always better.
I don't see what's wrong with the current raid system.

With the new system some dumb pug gets 4/12 ICC.
Then they expect to find another raid to carry them through the other 8?
Hellooo, the later parts of an instance is usually harder, what makes them think a pug will succeed there?

On the other hand, clearing a boss once a week means people will gear up slower.
While I am all for cutting down on overgeared but underskilled players, Blizz will have to put out twice the content to achieve the same amount of raid play. Is this a move to encourage more alts?
 
Blizz will have to put out twice the content to achieve the same amount of raid play
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Thats been probably my only real worry for a long time.
I doubt it will happen, but it needs to. If not three times. :p Personally id say at the very least 5x more content, but i would push 10x, even 100x.
timesxxtimesxxxxtimesxtimesxxtimesxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
I mean in general tho.
If not so many raids, at least 5 mans. We need stuff to play. LOTS

randomized dungeons would be good
 
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