Whenever I start to think the community is turning a corner, tradechat is always there to prove me wrong.
Whenever I start to think the community is turning a corner, tradechat is always there to prove me wrong.
Because desire, because curiosity, because $15 a month, because entitled viewpoint, because reasons. It varies from person to person.
⛥⛥⛥⛥⛥ "In short, people are idiots who don't really understand anything." ⛥⛥⛥⛥⛥
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Yeah I prefer "many get to raid" rather than "few get to raid" and "most get to raid".
many >>>>>> few > most
Icecrown was a good example of many in my opinion, though it too had it's own flaws.
To throw some self-assumed numbers out there, current raiding population represented as a percentage of the playerbase is probably something like this:
45% non raiders
40% LFR raiders
8% mid normal raiders
4% completionist normal raiders
2% mid heroic raiders
1% completionist heroic raiders
I'd much prefer it to be something like this:
54% non raiders
25% mid normal raiders
14% completionist normal raiders
5% mid heroic raiders
2% completionist heroic raiders
Less players participating in raiding overall, but far more players participating in normals and a bit more participating in heroics, the game felt sooo much better when the model was closer to this in my opinion, even when I was considered a mid normal raider.
The 54% non raiders would ideally have alternate game progression paths such as solo, PVP, pet battles and such for their purposes. Not everyone has to be a raider.
I agree, part of it is also some people really dont want to be raiders. Plus, some people are into just PVP
---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 02:10 AM ----------
Ya i think Wrath was a happy medium. As Radio points out, about 50% raided. Considering many just PVP and some aren't all that interested in raiding, I think this is a good system to shoot for. Normal was a bit easier than usual but HMs were quite difficult. Hasn't been since ToC and ICC where pugging was very common and there were tons of guilds. I think thats the type of community a successful MMO needs rather than pushing towards solo play.
Whenever I start to think the community is turning a corner, tradechat is always there to prove me wrong.
What did you people do before LFR? Obviously you enjoyed the game or you wouldn't still be playing, so what kept you playing if you couldn't raid?
I know you said those numbers weren't sourced but it's still interesting you assume the numbers to be like that.
But what time frame are we talking about? It seems whenever pull these numbers they don't really specify the time frame.
Why?
Because it's arbitrary.
What's wrong with players pugging and progressing through a tier that's behind?
We're still caught in this obsession that we have to be doing the latest tier and render the rest obsolete.
Played until I ran out of things to do, then stopped paying until the next patch. What I did from BC till LFR. The introduction of LFR led to me staying, for the first time ever, subscribed for an entire year (Actually, a bit longer than that). Prior, I'd play in a couple of months bursts.
The economic realities of the game DEMAND that lfr exists. Raiding is the most expensive content they make and the cost of producing it (mostly due to time) demands that raiding become much more pervasive and wide spread if it's going to continue as the fulcrum for end game play. Let's turn this around. Instead of 12 boss tot or 13 14 boss Soo would you accept a 4 boss instance and then 3 or 4 dungeons instead? While I agree about the solo play, LFR is not going anywhere. It is to good at making raiding an economic reality but more than that I would hope if the developers learned one thing this expansion it's that you can't take something away from people once you give it to them. You can try and make it shittier for them but they just leave when you do. LFR is not a perfect system by any means but removing it for whatever reason leaves a MASSIVE hole in the game and disenfranchises a whole section of the community for as far as I can tell no reason other than catering to vanity.
Pretty much this, couldn't get rid of it without something to replace it. Even with something to replace it there would be massive backlash. People want to make progress on their character, Blizzard wants to control how much progress they can make. They traditionally did that with raids, but scheduling being what it is excluded a lot of people. LFR lets Blizzard meet those goals, on a shoestring budget. I think having non LFR casual content with similar progression to LFR would be better for the game long term, but I doubt Blizzard would be willing to put some money down to try it and see.
I think it has something to do with the fact that a lot of the people who complete the exclusive content are often but not always, for want of a better term, assholes.
No exclusive content = no assholes? It's a silly way of thinking but it might explain a lot.
I shiou;ld probably amend that slightly to say "assholes on the forums and in trade chat" - basically the very vocal minority who are the public face of exclusive content are almost all knobends.
A significant counter example would be someone like Preachy, who is both for exclusive content and a happy man who is passionate about the game. But generally, forum posters on here, the official forums and elsewhere who are pro exclusivity usually come across about as sympathetic as Josef Mengele at a bar mitzvah.
And what about all that other content that was created for casuals? Sure its nothing to do if you dont care about it but doesnt mean it doesnt exists.
If Blizzard was actually going to remove LFR then they would replace it with something else or a mix of other things. Only those who will only do LFR will have nothing to do. At least according to GC most players have no interests in raiding so it doesnt matter if they dont have time for raiding guilds. Also you do not need to be apart of a guild in order to raid. There is such a thing called PuG raiding that casuals participate in.
In the end Blizzard isnt going to remove LFR but they have been making moves to make other things more attractive than LFR along with trying to get active realm populations up with virtual realms to help make PuGing of all content far more viable instead of relying on solo random queue systems.
I havent noticed any normal mode raiders complain about Ra-den, but I have seen a lot of LFR players complain about Ra-den. Could be sample size.
Last edited by nekobaka; 2013-06-24 at 07:38 AM.
This is VERY important to understanding the subscriber loss in mists. IN cataclysm SOME players were able to progress enormously fast. They consumed content at a rapid pace (still do today regardless of the efforts on the part of the developers) and as such claimed they were "bored". The solution to this was to turn the rate time to reward ratio wayyyyyy the fuck down. This was done primarily but gutting the valor system and not adding any new dungeons with new gear as catch up. For the hardcore time consuming players this was something of a bonanza in that they got what they wanted. They "had alot mroe to do" which really wasn't true. It's just that the things they would have normally done in the past became a whole lot grindier. The cost to all of this was ENOURMOUS for everybody else though. Method and the top progression guilds were fairly pissed they had to daily their faces off for 5 alts. For players entering into the expansion later it became much harder to catch up to do ToT (which was already overtuned from the launch of the bloody thing not to mention over burdened with mechanics) making progression that much more painful and slow and for the casual player they got the fucking shaft. Even when dungeons were "hard" in cataclysm you could progress pretty well. Sometimes you would get carried and to be honest not ever casual players is necesarilly a bad player. Those that are also potentially have friends who are good enough to carry them. Yes the initial cataclysm dungeons were hard BUT if you could overcome that you would be rewarded. Their is no overcoming rng in lfr. You are just fucked. That's it. Well for the casual player LFR is perhaps the least rewarding thing in the universe and is probably only challenged for that by dailies.
Having said all of that the situation described above is FAR FAR FAR better now than it was in 5.0. We shall see what the future holds I guess.
---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 07:31 AM ----------
[/COLOR]None of it was a serious attempt to engage casuals by rewarding them with character progression. When pet battles give out epics then we can talk.
Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-06-24 at 07:33 AM.