How would you like to handle the "gap" between LFR and Normal raiding?

[araine]

And! Of course it does not share difficulty with the other modes! Great... shit... Even more content burnout.

It isnt tuned or itemized for the elite guilds. you shouldnt have to worry about that mom and pop guilds finally might be able to take the 14 people they have online and kill a couple bosses really if you feel your supremacy is threatened by mom and pop guilds getting to down a couple bosses for fun?

[Shahad]

Hell yeah, almost exactly what I proposed! The return of beer league pugs and me being able to lend a hand to other guilds without screwing with my lockout!

[Osmeric]

Looks like it's designed with pugging in mind.

[Deleted]

It isnt tuned or itemized for the elite guilds. you shouldnt have to worry about that mom and pop guilds finally might be able to take the 14 people they have online and kill a couple bosses really if you feel your supremacy is threatened by mom and pop guilds getting to down a couple bosses for fun?

Did I say anything about that. You are a master of putting words into players mouths. I think this mode is completely awesome. The problem, again, is that it hurts normal/heroic raiders. It is awesome for people that do not have the time commitment and/or skill the raid normals/heroics. However, if this mode is designed to be a replacement for people that cant handle normal modes, why could it no share lockout with normals? If the mode is for people that cant run normals, it wouldnt matter for them, and for people in normals, nothing would change. The drawback of this is that people in normal/heroic cant jump in and help their friends in flex mode. So if flex is supposed to be an organised LFR.
You could instead make it share with LFR. This way, it would still only be 2 lockouts per week instead of 3 to grind gearing up on your alts, rerolls, and mains during the first weeks.

Or even better, why cant this just replace LFR completely. This mode adds a mode that is easily accessible and allows player to see content. What purpose does LFR fill now, other than having a hostile game mode where people are mad at eachother, a game mode with 0 player interaction ruining the server communities. Having a mode with non-automatic grouping is awesome. Automatic grouping does not belong in raiding.

[Shahad]

LFR still makes sense because of it's queuing system. It'll remain relevant at least untill realm population issues have been addressed.

[Deleted]

LFR still makes sense because of it's queuing system. It'll remain relevant at least untill realm population issues have been addressed.

What about making flex crossrealm, aswell as adding a crossrealm LFG chat/system, similar to how you could sign up for heroics in early WotLK, only crossrealm, you could get a menu where people sign as tanks/healers/dps and write a comment.

[Shahad]

Flex is already crossrealm for current content. An ingame version of openraid would indeed pretty much put an end to LFR's utility. But for the time being, that's how things are.

[jsavigny]

Make it shared with N, because if they make it share lockout with LFR, the queue shall be terrible.

[Darmalus]

*Does Happy Pandaren Dance*

Blizzard's solution is all I wanted, even stuff I didn't know I wanted but already feel is mandatory for any new MMO to get my business.

---------- Post added 2013-06-07 at 03:58 AM ----------

What about making flex crossrealm, ...

Flex is cross realm already. Dunno about the chat, sounds like some sort of Raid-Forming Lobby?

[Shahad]

Make it shared with N, because if they make it share lockout with LFR, the queue shall be terrible.

It shares a lockout with neither. Did you even read the front page?

[Deleted]

Flex is cross realm already. Dunno about the chat, sounds like some sort of Raid-Forming Lobby?

A way to creating crossrealm pugs, yes, without having to use openraid or logging around different servers with alts.
This shoul be bandaid fix to that blizzar refuses to merge dead servers.

[rcgn]

What about making flex crossrealm, aswell as adding a crossrealm LFG chat/system, similar to how you could sign up for heroics in early WotLK, only crossrealm, you could get a menu where people sign as tanks/healers/dps and write a comment.

See that would have been fantastic just before DS LFR. But as Blizzard would say, it's hard to go backwards. Taking away a simple and effective queuing system for a manually grouping system just doesn't make sense in game development and the players who like queuing will not like it. I hate queuing myself but if the only raid I could do was a LFR variant where I had to "sign up" and wait on hours only to get rejected for not having gear or ach (or having the group fail) would not get me excited.

When I think of that I just think of the 5.5k gs requirements to get into VoA runs.

edit; But I would be A LOT happier if they could just share the LFR and Flexiraid lockouts. I really want to understand their reasoning behind them not having shared locks. I mean they must have a good reason right?

[nekobaka]

Looks like it's designed with pugging in mind.

It really does and I was hoping for something like this. I just feel like the timing would have been better in Cata. The PuG population on high population realms now are even lower than they was back in Cata.

This would go nicely for those small or somewhat broken up guilds or very small groups of friends that want to tag along with other small groups given the flexibility in size as long as you meet the main rolls.

See that would have been fantastic just before DS LFR. But as Blizzard would say, it's hard to go backwards. Taking away a simple and effective queuing system for a manually grouping system just doesn't make sense in game development and the players who like queuing will not like it.

This is part of why I feel like the system is too late. I feel that had this system been launched in place of LFR then there might not have been an LFR. Kind of like the duel spec system that the developers mentioned might not have gotten launched if the current talent point system had been in place.

edit; But I would be A LOT happier if they could just share the LFR and Flexiraid lockouts. I really want to understand their reasoning behind them not having shared locks. I mean they must have a good reason right?

I think it is like how another poster in another thread mentioned about population split being an issue. By sharing lockouts you keep players and in particular experienced players from filling queues and helping to keep runs smooth aka carring. With Flex raid there might be more of a chance that someone who runs LFR might want to do a Flex raid and then at the start of the week has to make a choice of one or the other and maybe hold out for a Flex group to the point that they might not even have time to do LFR if they fail to find a group.

A way to creating crossrealm pugs, yes, without having to use openraid or logging around different servers with alts.
This shoul be bandaid fix to that blizzar refuses to merge dead servers.

Battle.net is apparently getting a launcher. There is a lot that can be done with the system on Blizzards end. Given Blizzard pace and how little they have done though we the players might end up just sticking with third party options that Blizzard might then get around to copying while hopefully not making a shitty copy that lacks functionality.

[Pua]

It isnt tuned or itemized for the elite guilds. you shouldnt have to worry about that mom and pop guilds finally might be able to take the 14 people they have online and kill a couple bosses really if you feel your supremacy is threatened by mom and pop guilds getting to down a couple bosses for fun?

That's not even remotely what he implied.

Anyone arguing that "if you don't want to run it you don't have to" should take a look around the forums. The RNG system of endgame looting shoves people into more and more content that they might not necessarily run because it's the statistically best way of alleviating streaks of bad luck.

As to the criticism:

LFR/Flexi share a lockout, as do normal/heroic. I'm not sure those complaining about the queue have a valid point, given that a resurgence in PuG content will remove the need for LFR almost entirely.

[Firebert]

I'm disappointed that it's not soloqueuable and that the minimum players required is ten. I mean, it's a step in the right direction, I just don't want it to have a similar uptake to Rated BGs.

[Osmeric]

I'm disappointed that it's not soloqueuable and that the minimum players required is ten. I mean, it's a step in the right direction, I just don't want it to have a similar uptake to Rated BGs.

I suspect they'd have a hard time scaling down raid mechanics to fewer than ten players.

Pretty optimistic about this feature. You can see they've been considering many angles here.

[Firebert]

I suspect they'd have a hard time scaling down raid mechanics to fewer than ten players.

Ten-man raids with no-showers get cancelled, 25-mans relatively unaffected as they drop from Normal to Flex.

Pretty optimistic about this feature. You can see they've been considering many angles here.

Agree, could do with some tweaking though.

[Deleted]

so the gap was just filled for you by Blizzard with Flex, enjoy
or have you started bitching that it drops lower ilvl gear then normals already?

[Linkedblade]

No Gap? Make the encounters exactly the same. Give no benefit to the LFR raiders. Let it only be computer matchmaking for raiding. Done.

[Firebert]

so the gap was just filled for you by Blizzard with Flex, enjoy
or have you started bitching that it drops lower ilvl gear then normals already?

At least with the Flex achievement you can get into Normals.