Where's the power balance in dungeons/raids?

Testing it and it seems 5 man dungeons are a breeze, would 4 man be better for feeling like it's not a complete steamroll?

Tried 25 man naxx also, and that felt easy but only tested the first 3 bosses. Would 20man feel better?

Also why do they stand still waiting for a pull, can they not be made to move around a little bit?

Good questions, and the first two have an answer that catches most people out: shrinking the group will not make it harder here. Instances are scaled to the number of bodies inside them, and companions count as bodies. A five-man run with you and four of them is scaled for five. Drop to four and the dungeon is scaled for four, so the content shrinks along with you. Twenty-five-man Naxxramas with twenty is the same story.

But you have put your finger on something real, and it is not the group size. It is that creature levels were being scaled to meet you, in both directions, for every character by default. That is what made Naxxramas feel like a formality, and it is what quietly took the meaning out of being ready for something.

That default is changing, and it ships with the next patch. From then on a new character starts with creature levels left alone: content is genuinely out of reach until you have the levels for it, and genuinely easy once you are well past it. What is not changing is the adjustment for how many of you actually walk in, because that is what lets one player and a handful of companions enter content built for twenty-five, and at a full group it barely does anything anyway.

Nothing is being locked away. The Adventure Assistant, which you summon with .aa, keeps all three settings under its options: levels scaled both ways, levels left alone, or no scaling whatsoever. If you want the dungeon exactly as it shipped, pick the third. One catch worth knowing: your choice applies to instances you open from then on, never to the one you are standing in, so set it before you zone in.

If you want to go further than numbers, the Shrine of Challenge has per-character rule sets, Hardcore, Iron Man, self-crafted gear only and slower experience among them. Those change how a run is played rather than how much health things have.

On the companions standing still: that one is deliberate. One that wanders off in a dungeon walks into the next pack and pulls it, and with a full group behind you that ends the run. They are not frozen, the default formation re-rolls each one's spot every few seconds rather than locking them into a line, but the movement is kept deliberately small. You can change the shape they hold, though, there are several to choose from: arrow, circle, line, shield, queue, melee, near, far, and the default.

If you would rather not be the one doing the leading, hand the run over entirely. Type .dc on inside a dungeon and your tank companion takes charge of the whole thing: it routes the party from boss to boss over the live navigation mesh, so it works in any instance without hand-drawn paths, pulls the trash on the way, loots what is worth taking, and stops to eat and drink between fights. It also works the levers, altars, gongs, escorts and wave events that gate progress. If someone dies and a Priest, Paladin, Shaman or Druid is still standing, the run holds while they resurrect and resumes once everyone is up; only a full wipe ends it. Heroic is supported, with more careful pulls. It stops the moment you tell it to. There is an optional add-on with a panel for the same orders plus per-run settings that have no command at all.

The full command list is on the PlayerBots project wiki, and the modules page on the site lists what each module adds.

Thanks for testing and writing it up, this one led somewhere useful.

Hey, thanks for the response - very thorough and interesting read being new to all this.

You said: "Nothing is being locked away. The Adventure Assistant, which you summon with .aa, keeps all three settings under its options: levels scaled both ways, levels left alone, or no scaling whatsoever. If you want the dungeon exactly as it shipped, pick the third. One catch worth knowing: your choice applies to instances you open from then on, never to the one you are standing in, so set it before you zone in."

Where is this option found? And am I right in thinking, if I want it to not scale to the party, I pick no scaling, and that would then mean 5 man dungeons need 5 people to feel standard, and raids need 10 or 25 (or 22-25 depending on group/gear) to feel fine? If you have no scaling, and take 15 men to a 25 heroic, it might be tough, right?

Also I get that about the behaviour standing still etc, makes sense, how do you change the formation (arrow, circle, etc)?

Another one.. also noticing when I enter raids with a raid party, they seem to get stuck outside, and don't appear inside - I can't join a raid without a party, so what's the best way to handle that - is there any command to pull players in? This happens with 5 man dungeons to: you invite players, some of them never make it to the dungeon so I kick and replace, this can happen several times. Same as if they die in a dungeon and don't ress, what happens there? Do you just remove them from group + queue up another player?

Would be cool to group up with other players though - without discord or anything, it's hard to see who is human online + would like to group up. Any thoughts on getting a discord? I remember your comment to it was that you didn't want to give an impression that 24/7 support is there - discord doesn't have to be like that, I don't think people will expect it, but it's a cool way to chat to people in real-time rather than a forum post. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks again, awesome server. It's very interesting figuring out some of the AA options as I go, there's loads of sandbox stuff here. Well done.

Glad it was useful, and thanks for the kind words.

Where the option lives. Summon the Adventure Assistant with ".aa", open Settings, and look for the three lines starting with "Dungeon scaling": standard, original levels, and none at all. Pick one and you are done.

Your understanding is right, with one distinction worth having. The three settings are not a single slider, they are two independent things.

Standard scales creature levels to you and adjusts for how many bodies walk in.
Original levels stops touching levels but keeps the body-count adjustment. This is what everyone will start with after the next patch.
None at all turns the whole thing off. The instance is exactly as it shipped: native levels, native stats for the full intended group, native experience.

So yes: with none at all, a five-man wants five people at the right level, and a twenty-five-man raid wants twenty-five. Taking fifteen into a twenty-five heroic would be rough, and bosses with enrage timers or mechanics needing bodies in several places may simply not be doable. That is the point of the setting, but go in expecting it.

One thing in the other direction: the body-count adjustment does almost nothing once you are at the intended size. Five in a five-man is already the designed difficulty. Its whole effect is at the short-handed end.

Formations. Type it in party or raid chat and every companion of yours obeys, or whisper one to talk to it alone. "formation circle", "formation arrow", and so on. The full set is arrow, circle, line, shield, queue, melee, near, far, and chaos, which is the default.
You can have a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/wowservers/comments/1vfmjsj/some_tips_when_using_playerbots_for_parties/ for other tips.

The companions left outside. Two different things are happening, and only one of them is a problem.

The first is a hard limit you cannot argue with: an instance holds a fixed number of bodies, five for a dungeon, ten or twenty-five for a raid, and companions count toward it. A raid group of twenty-six for a twenty-five-man will always leave one outside, and no command changes that. Worth checking your group size against the instance size before assuming anything is broken.

For the rest - the ones who genuinely fail to follow you through - the fix is the "summon" command. Type it in party or raid chat and they come to you, wherever they are, through a portal as easily as across a room. I hit this myself often enough to reach for it by reflex; you should not have to kick and replace anyone.

There is now a Summon party entry in the Adventure Assistant that does the same thing for the whole group in one click. It existed in the menu but was wired to nothing until two days ago, so if you tried it before and nothing happened, that was why. The command is the one with mileage on it, so use that first.

Same menu has Resurrect party for the fallen, at full health with no resurrection sickness. One limit I cannot remove, and you will meet it eventually: you cannot talk to the Assistant while you are dead, so after a full wipe nobody can reach it. Someone has to still be standing.

On finding other humans. There is a realm-wide World channel, and it is exactly what you are asking for: it is human-only, by construction. Companions are kept out of it entirely - they are never enrolled in it, they cannot post to it, and they cannot even read it. So every voice you see there is a person.

It is also cross-faction, so Alliance and Horde read the same line, and you are enrolled automatically when you log in. Type ".chat your message" to talk in it, or use the normal channel syntax since it sits in your channel list as World. ".chat off" and ".chat on" mute and restore it if you ever want quiet.

For the simpler question of whether anyone is on at all, the site's front page carries a live count that separates real players from companions, so you can check before logging in rather than guessing from the crowd in Dalaran.

Sorry but just asking for a clarification, if I wanted to solo dungeons/raids without any bots or any other players, just with my Character alone, the auto-scaling should make that possible right?

Yes, stravoman. The option is available. You simply need to enable normal dungeon scaling through the Adventure Assistant.

Thank you so much, I appreciate the quick reply!