To people whom want LFR removed: What endgame do you propose for the casual players?

[Deleted]

And therein lies the problem in my opinion.

World of WarCraft was not advertised as a raiding-based game to most of its audience. Certainly gamers with previous experience from mmos realized that there would be some type of such activity, but they were, and are, just a small minority. The vast majority of players that flocked to the game came for its open world aspect; that promise of a vast world filled with mysteries and adventures; not the raiding.

And initially, they got what they came for; vanilla, with all its shortcomings, offered an immense amount of open world content, mostly concerning exploration and questing; while at the same time it provided some, but very limited compared to nowadays, hand-holding. The amount of content, the type of content, and the time spent figuring out how to approach it, led to the most positive period of the game, for casual players mostly as well.

And it was only when the developers tried to shoehorn everyone into raiding, collecting points, repeating dungeons, gathering gear, etc; that the game started to become boring, repetitive, feel like a chore, and the greatest "sin" of all: lack excitement. Why did they do that? Other than the fact that it is easier, cheaper and faster to develop instanced and repeated content than open world one, I don't know. But they did. And they dragged most of the casual players to that content through the lure of rewards.

The result is a game that is inherently boring, favours and even instills routines (in a supposedly grand adventure of all things), promotes individuality instead of cooperation and just plain feels like a tour, a very comfortable one, through a park, rather than an exciting journey through a mythical world.

At the same time you have Skyrim exceeding 10 million copies sold, in an age of rampant piracy nonetheless, by doing exactly what vanilla did: offer a vast, complex open world for players to adventure in. And then people wonder what went wrong?

Wonderful point. Raiding wasn't even in the game at launch. I came to be a footsoldier in the orcs versus humans scenario I had enjoyed in the previous games.

I remember some of the complaints at release on that score, as it happens - the lack of being able to take enemy cities properly, no way to capture zones etc

[Marquize]

Flex is by no stretch of the imagination hard, I'd argue that it's easier than LFR at times just becuase it's more organised and you can make sure everyone knows the tactics before starting. Flex is the answer for the one searching for endgame when they remove LFR

[GennGreymane]

I feel flex should have been the original LFR system. It is just a bigger version of what the original LFG was meant to be which was to not fully create groups, but supplement what was needed.

[DeadmanWalking]

Can you please stop with the arguments: "People pay 15$ for the game so they deserve to see the content!"?
That's just stupid. People pay 15$ a month to get the CHANCE at seeing all of the content.
They have a whole month to fly around, see every piece of the land, experience every dungeon they are able to get into or a raid that they can get invited into or set up. Under no circumstances paying 15$ a month should instantly let you see all the raid content that's been created with a minimal if not no effort.
The world is there to witness but YOU need to actually put some effort into it in seeing it.
This "I paid for the game, let me see and kill Garrosh" attitude is literally pissing me off as I constantly see posts that claim that all the people who pay the sub should be getting "equal" chance at seeing the endgame content.
NO, they shouldn't.
Paying the sub shouldn't allow you to "finish" WoW. It should only give you the possibility for doing that if you put enough effort into it.
It is an MMO, there should be some work involved in getting through the content.
And people who keep saying that they just don't have enough time anymore for organized raiding or flex raiding or they just can't stand being on the same TS/Vent channel with other people, guess what?
There are single player games! Yes, if you don't have the time, energy, skill, will to put some effort into playing with other people in a Massive MULTIPLAYER Online Role Playing Game then maybe you shouldn't.
Go play Skyrim or some other RPG if you like them so much, at best ask a friend to play with you and play cooperative mode in some single player game. But for Christ sake don't put pressure on the developers so that they make the game fitting more to your lifestyle as you are fu**ing it up for everyone else.
I myself am a GM of a semi-casual guild. We've just killed Klaxxi on normal a week ago and are still progressing Garrosh. Do I have a life? Yes! I'm studying, working part-time and got a GF and still got time to raid 3-4 times a week at evenings. It is perfectly doable. I'm not doing LFR anymore as it is a waste of time and energy for me to keep up with all this cr*p that's going on in there but even if I had less time i still wouldn't do it. I'd rather ransack through flex with a bunch of friends than go and waste hours on playing with people who don't give 2 shi*s about other people playing the game.
Been playing wow since Vanilla and I actually saw every change made to the game since it was released and I'm horrified by the scale of work Blizz has done to make the game a complete pushover.
I recently went on a private vanilla server and remembered how hard was it to actually level, do quests and kill monsters. You could hardly pull 2 mobs at once at low levels, that encouraged learning. Made people learn their class and how the game works BEFORE they achieved max lvl and could raid (it took quite some time from hitting max lvl to being able to raid but that's not the point). Now it's easy peasy all the way to 90 and Blizz is trying to figure out why LFR has problems? People have no idea how to play out their roles at all. Those who have either AFK or just don't even try.
In the process of satisfying "casuals" (I consider myself a casual but people overuse this term lately) Blizz has gone too far and nearly destroyed the sole essence of this game.
WoW has many aspects, most of people will have a chance to see the world, some will have a chance at getting nice gear in dungeons and a really really low margin of people should have a chance at beating the raid bosses on HC, that's how the game should work instead of creating weird LFR or whatnot modes just to make everybody "equall".
This "everyone should be equall" comunist style is literally pissing me off...

It’s not about deserving to see end game, it is about keeping casuals occupied while continuing to serve raiders full tilt. The only real meaning for anyone’s $15 a month is that raiders can not support their own content on their $15 a month. Casuals will get -something- to keep them occupied, thats not in doubt as they are at least 80% of the playerbase, but as the system currently stands they create copious amounts of raid content then dumb it down and serve it to the masses as LFR. As long as the casuals consume LFR it keeps raiders neck deep in raid content. As a raider I don’t want to see LFR go away because that means we will be loosing raid content. If someone is happy doing dumbed down versions of the fight and I continue to get 46 raid bosses every 18 months then I am happy as hell.

The raiding calling for the end of LFR is basically putting double barrels in their mouth and pulling the trigger.

Your communist comment is cute but slightly misdirected, in communism everyone isn't even, in true communism everyone is poor. With LFR raiders get lots of content, in communist No-LFR-Land no one gets raid content, everyone is poor.

[ButterToast]

only an idiot would complain and want LFR/LFG removed. If you don't like it then simply don't do it.

I personally don't enjoy LFR, but what do I do about that ? I DON'T DO IT.

BUT I personally like the fact that LFR and LFG exist, so that when I wanna do dungeons / raids for gear,
I wont bump into retards that require me to link [Epic] Achievement for a dungeon that gives [Superior (or Rare?)] achievement quality gear.
or other retards that require me to have gear that is BETTER or FROM the raid itself.

LFR and LFG is such a good solution for the crap that happened in Wrath for me anyways.

[Manabomb]

Ahhh the removal of Lfr. Such a wonderfully corrosive topic. I remember well back in my day of slaying titans and evil black dragons in their lair, you joined a guild and pugged for these types of privileges!

But let's be serious here. The days of vanilla, tbc and wotlk are very well gone and the average raider of today is focused on the bleeding edge. Even normal mode raiders have a much higher standard of average player to join their ranks than even some hardcore guilds had "back in the day". As time progressed, the more fine the bleeding edge of content progression has become, but at the same inverse has bloated the head of the axe that is competitive raiding.

Time as moved on to the point where previous raiders cannot raid, or new raiders do not have the experience or gear. Infact, I would almost say that lfr has created some of the problem involved with gearing up to be ready for raiding, however the system of lfr itself is there for those of us (myself not included) that simply cannot deal with the time sink that raiding has evolved from and into. While Lfr is not a perfect system and could stand for quite a many improvement, this is a system that is actually trying to address a problem the game has had, the casuals of the game (or the middle class if you will) were becoming stagnant and bored.

Did lfr fixed this problem? Did lfr create more problems to add to the problems it was attempting to fix? Objective questions that can be perceived in the eye of the beholder. Arguing over if it should exist or not is folly. We should be talking about what improvements should be done to help address the problems it has caused and the issues it has left unresolved.

[Drithien]

I actually expect more of Timeless Island style stuff in the next x-pac...

I dearly hope so. Taking the concept of Timeless Isle and expanding/integrating it into multiple, larger zones, combining it with questing, and letting go of the so numerous hand-holding tools, would be a very nice move. But, to be honest, I really am not that confident about the direction of the game anymore. I hope I am wrong though!

[Manabomb]

And therein lies the problem in my opinion.

World of WarCraft was not advertised as a raiding-based game to most of its audience. Certainly gamers with previous experience from mmos realized that there would be some type of such activity, but they were, and are, just a small minority. The vast majority of players that flocked to the game came for its open world aspect; that promise of a vast world filled with mysteries and adventures; not the raiding.

And initially, they got what they came for; vanilla, with all its shortcomings, offered an immense amount of open world content, mostly concerning exploration and questing; while at the same time it provided some, but very limited compared to nowadays, hand-holding. The amount of content, the type of content, and the time spent figuring out how to approach it, led to the most positive period of the game, for casual players mostly as well.

And it was only when the developers tried to shoehorn everyone into raiding, collecting points, repeating dungeons, gathering gear, etc; that the game started to become boring, repetitive, feel like a chore, and the greatest "sin" of all: lack excitement. Why did they do that? Other than the fact that it is easier, cheaper and faster to develop instanced and repeated content than open world one, I don't know. But they did. And they dragged most of the casual players to that content through the lure of rewards.

The result is a game that is inherently boring, favours and even instills routines (in a supposedly grand adventure of all things), promotes individuality instead of cooperation and just plain feels like a tour, a very comfortable one, through a park, rather than an exciting journey through a mythical world.

At the same time you have Skyrim exceeding 10 million copies sold, in an age of rampant piracy nonetheless, by doing exactly what vanilla did: offer a vast, complex open world for players to adventure in. And then people wonder what went wrong?

The problem is, it's difficult to justify playing a pay to play game that has limited content you can explore. Hell the skyrim example you give is actually perfect in the sense that after a month or two of the same skyrim, you're over it. Even after heavy modding (if you're lucky enough to not have wasted money on console versions) the game can very well become pale and stagnant.

Blizzard had a choice. Either attempt to push content they had no variable control over, offering a free to roam and very risky sense of business investment, or offer a controlled but rather repetitive form of "carrot on the end of the stick"-ing. I think the only thing we could agree on here is that both platforms of content will eventually get old and boring. It's human nature. It's very odd to say it's because of this the game itself is wrong, because in doing so you suggest the entire perception on what is a valid time-sink of unused minutes is fundamentally flawed. And I have to disagree.

[DeadmanWalking]

If you guys really want LFR gone then you might as well shoot raiding in the face. I raid, I dont want LFR gone because I like haing 46 raid bosses every 18 months. I don't care if someone get's raiders sloppy seconds, or fouths in this case.

It's not about earning the right to see content, it's not about $15 a month. It is about keeping casuals busy in raid based content, that is all LFR has ever been about. Use raid content to keep casuals busy so Blizzard can keep serving Raiders what we need.

Stop shooting my raid content in the face!

[banadona]

It’s not about deserving to see end game, it is about keeping casuals occupied while continuing to serve raiders full tilt. The only real meaning for anyone’s $15 a month is that raiders can not support their own content on their $15 a month. Casuals will get -something- to keep them occupied, thats not in doubt as they are at least 80% of the playerbase, but as the system currently stands they create copious amounts of raid content then dumb it down and serve it to the masses as LFR. As long as the casuals consume LFR it keeps raiders neck deep in raid content. As a raider I don’t want to see LFR go away because that means we will be loosing raid content. If someone is happy doing dumbed down versions of the fight and I continue to get 46 raid bosses every 18 months then I am happy as hell.

The raiding calling for the end of LFR is basically putting double barrels in their mouth and pulling the trigger.

Your communist comment is cute but slightly misdirected, in communism everyone isn't even, in true communism everyone is poor. With LFR raiders get lots of content, in communist No-LFR-Land no one gets raid content, everyone is poor.

That's why I said that the content is there. All it requires is EFFORT. If you are not willing to put any effort into the game then don't play the game. And clicking one button to queye for LFR then going AFK because I have to do laundry is not a high enough effort to see the final raid.
And what is the point of letting "casuals" play as they like if they ruin the game for other people as Blizzard is not adjusting the game up to the people who DO make an effort but for the ones that don't give a sh*t and still demand equal treatment.
Before LFR content was still being released so I don't see your argument with "delete LFR = suicide for raiders" being viable.
People need to understand that I is not solely about money, even if "casuals" do make the majority the game shouldn't become a complete "casual rollercoaster" just because people "have a life".
When it comes to communism I was talking about the "ideal/theoretical communism" not the one that came into being, and I know something about it as I have lived in a communist country myself.

[Deleted]

Most people forget how boring grinding End time dungeons was before LFR came out.

U wot mate? End time dungeons and LFR were released in the same patch in late 2011.

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And it doesn't address the needs of the LFR crowd. It addresses friends and family guilds, which aren't quite the same thing as casual players without the time to adhere to set schedules.

But Flex does make it easier for guilds to invite those casual guildies who happen to be online at the right time, and for people to form Pugs to clear the raids.

And let's remember that the game has had millions of subscribers since 2004. LFR has only existed since late 2011. Clearly the "endgame" was adequately entertaining for everyone else without shoving them into raids.

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Normal mode raiding. Casual players should be looking forward towards seeing content by working for it, not get it handed to them on a plate.

The difficulty of "normal mode" raiding has fluctuated all over the place. It was pug friendly in Wrath, but a good deal too difficult for pugs in Cataclysm.

[l33t]

I dearly hope so. Taking the concept of Timeless Isle and expanding/integrating it into multiple, larger zones, combining it with questing, and letting go of the so numerous hand-holding tools, would be a very nice move. But, to be honest, I really am not that confident about the direction of the game anymore. I hope I am wrong though!

I highly doubt, to be honest, that mindlessly roaming around and killing random mobs with very high respawn timers and very low chances on any meaningful loot is a good direction for game to evolve, at least in PvE sence of playing it. You know, for sandbox to be truly fun to play, it must have lots of exploration. TI has little to no exploration.

[Deleted]

being judged by others and letting them decide if you're allowed to touch parts of the game or not, and so forth.

You do understand why raidleaders have to evaluate people's skill and gear before inviting them, right?
Its not because they want to deny you your delicious gear candy. If you're not good enough, then no one gets candy because the bosses won't die.

[Snuglz]

Removed LFR and do Flex. Problem solved? Or is it too big of a deal to do more than press 1 button to que and sit in a terrible LFR group and hope to get carried thru the content.

[khalltusk]

U wot mate? End time dungeons and LFR were released in the same patch in late 2011.

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But Flex does make it easier for guilds to invite those casual guildies who happen to be online at the right time, and for people to form Pugs to clear the raids.

And let's remember that the game has had millions of subscribers since 2004. LFR has only existed since late 2011. Clearly the "endgame" was adequately entertaining for everyone else without shoving them into raids.

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The difficulty of "normal mode" raiding has fluctuated all over the place. It was pug friendly in Wrath, but a good deal too difficult for pugs in Cataclysm.

The end game was not for a majority of people during Vanilla and TBC the majority of players were simply leveling. A minority wanted easier leveling for alts so they could get them into raids and such. Blizzard listened to them and then the people who were simply leveling could easily get to max level and found there was not much content for them that they could do easily.

Blizzard stated it many times players who were presented a challenge simply left if it was too much for them. In wrath we had a LOT of dungeons and easy to access heroics. Raid content was easier to get into and was more successful in getting bodies through the door than TBC but still was not the most popular content. Cata did a reverse on raid content making it harder and heroics became harder. The backlash was huge and subs dropped off fast. They nerfed the content to ease the issue. LFR came in to give raiding as blizzards main focus is raiding still and mop saw a HUGE drop in 5man content as a result. Something they admit is a mistake (in as far as reducing 5man content).

I think LFD was brought out late wrath to enable casual players easy access to dungeon content to get more people into dungeons.

We can't simply say the game had millions of people prior and thus end game was great for them. The sad truth is wow had millions of people but many left but were replaced by a new person. Now theres a lack of new players and they want to try and retain and entice old customers.

[Gilian]

What is a proper LFG tool? The point of LFG is the priority of getting your group full over choosing who's joining you. Your wish of more control over who actually joins is better achieved by traditionally going through your friend list and asking people if they want to sign up for it. I don't get it.

I agree with the rest, obviously.

Like I said (a finished and polished) oQueue.
Asking friends isn't as accessible and convenient as asking all players from multiple realms. And the benefits from having control over who you play with is that you are better able to avoid disappointment and frustration that you constantly see in LFR (which they diminish by nerfing right now while some players are already bored by it and thus rather move on to something else than get frustrated in a raid on a difficulty that is not for them).

[DeadmanWalking]

That's why I said that the content is there. All it requires is EFFORT. If you are not willing to put any effort into the game then don't play the game. And clicking one button to queye for LFR then going AFK because I have to do laundry is not a high enough effort to see the final raid.
And what is the point of letting "casuals" play as they like if they ruin the game for other people as Blizzard is not adjusting the game up to the people who DO make an effort but for the ones that don't give a sh*t and still demand equal treatment.
Before LFR content was still being released so I don't see your argument with "delete LFR = suicide for raiders" being viable.
People need to understand that I is not solely about money, even if "casuals" do make the majority the game shouldn't become a complete "casual rollercoaster" just because people "have a life".
When it comes to communism I was talking about the "ideal/theoretical communism" not the one that came into being, and I know something about it as I have lived in a communist country myself.

No, this is not about effort. Raiding content went on the chopping block the moment the bean counter entered the picture. They have been quoted saying that they can not justify using 90% of the resources to make content that 90% of the game will never see. With LFR everyone does see the content and the raider gets the benefit of 100% of the resources for end game material. If they make something else for casuals just so raiders can be exclusive again then we will loose the majority of the resources. Its simple math. This ideal that casuals will get what they want and raiders will continue to get the same amount of resources is sheer lunacy.

[Gilian]

If you guys really want LFR gone then you might as well shoot raiding in the face. I raid, I dont want LFR gone because I like haing 46 raid bosses every 18 months. I don't care if someone get's raiders sloppy seconds, or fouths in this case.

It's not about earning the right to see content, it's not about $15 a month. It is about keeping casuals busy in raid based content, that is all LFR has ever been about. Use raid content to keep casuals busy so Blizzard can keep serving Raiders what we need.

Stop shooting my raid content in the face!

Tons of players are not having fun in there so stop being so greedy and ignorant (this is for everyone who instantly get butthurt when LFR is mentioned in a negative way).

only an idiot would complain and want LFR/LFG removed. If you don't like it then simply don't do it.

Only an idiot would not improve LFR/LFG when there are so many complaints about them and there are some very good improvements or replacements out there, especially with all the new tech they have created this expansion.

Yes, the game is no longer like TBC and the game needs to evolve or whatever. Now it's time for you people to get over LFR and accept change. But that is different right? Because it affects you...

[Deleted]

TBC added one additional 5 man at the end of the expansion. Granted that's one more than mists but we got more in cata and in wotlk.

Yes, but TBC STARTED with more 5 mans than any expansion to date.
TBC had Hellfire Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Shattered Halls, Slave Pens, Underbog, Steamvaults, Mana Tombs, Auch Crypts, Sethekk Halls, Shadow Labyrinth, Arcatraz, Mechanar, Botanica, Durnhole, Dark Portal. FIFTEEN dungeons. Plus Magister's Terrace tagged on in the final patch.

Wrath had Utgarde Keep and Pinnacle, Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, Draktharon Keep, Gundrak, The Nexus(?), The Oculus, Violet Hold, Old Stratholme, Azjol-Nerub and Ahn'Kahet. Twelve dungeons. Plus the Horsie Arena one, then the 3 ICC ones. Whaddya know, the same number as TBC.

But the clever thing was, TBC's dungeons weren't all the same difficulty. So when I started doing them in Patch 2.1, I'd only run Mechanar, Slave Pens, Underbog, Ramparts. Then as the average gear level went up due to better badge gear, more Kara pugs and better pvp gear, I started doing the harder heroics as well.

Between that and some pvp there was quite a bit to do even without raiding. Heroic 5 mans were damned fun then. They were less friendly to bad players, but they were more friendly to time limited players because the overall clear time was less.

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You're making a tremendous assumption to claim that "casuals" were content to just kill the same bosses over and over again. Maybe, after doing that for so long and getting nowhere, they got tired of it, or felt that, after having experienced raids in WotLK, the whole "killing the same dungeon bosses for no reason" suddenly wasn't going to cut it.

And killing the same raid bosses over and over will keep casuals happy?

[Daffan]

Maybe if they aren't devoted players try don't belong in this type of game...

But I would add a lot of hard dungeons. Like hour or two hour long ones. If thu can't do an hour then they can't do LFR now.

Or put them in proving grounds till they can do average dps. Then flex.

yup

the problem is not just LFR its that they made everything so EASY, DUMB, and CRAPPY other than raids.