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

[DeadmanWalking]

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 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...

You mean the change where its already hard baked into the next expansion as the same LFR we have right now? Why do we have to get over lfr and accept change when LFR is not going anywhere and isn't changing? LOL! Who is sounding butthurt here? I'm a raider who enjoys going into LFR to progress my character and do an hour long activity with my guild.

Accept change! Lol! HAhahahahaha!

[Drithien]

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.

I did mention integration. Not merely copying Timeless Isle. it's about the concept, not the present execution. Imagine lots of zones, each with elements from Timeless Isle, like platforming sections, hidden areas, challenging enemies, little useful buffs scattered around in various forms, random-time-based events, etc. It's about the increased interactivity with the game's environment, not waiting for rares to spawn. On the contrary, removing achievements that spoil hidden parts of the game, as well as collecting achievements for the same reason, making spawn timers far more random, rare enemies actually rare; adding some behavioural elements to flora and fauna, would be better in my opinion. I am not wishing for more Timeless Isles. I think that the Timeless Isle was a worthy first step of a up-to-now severely crippled person. Clumsy, not much of a quality step, a near disaster even, but vital and immensely important nonetheless.

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.

Of course different people like different things; so a raider at heart won't be satisfied much with anything but raiding.However similarly, an adventurer won't get satisfied with anything but adventuring. He/she will participate in raiding, if it is the only thing available, but not happily. The trick is, in my opinion, to offer people, to each group of activities, what they truly want; with each part of the game being equally well developed, in quality and quantity.

Vanilla, lasted for most casuals for far more than just a couple of months though; due exactly to the quantity of content, not just the type. There were six main campaigns, not just two (and two that are mostly the same in essence, pertaining to the same subject, in similar ways). There were about 38 zones, not just 8. Players had to figure out what to do, they didn't have giant arrows pointing them to places. Wandering the world was actually dangerous;getting close to death or dying was a regular phenomenon, not a sudden recollection of a long forgotten state. Things took time and effort to be accomplished, and that added quite a lot to the longevity of the game. Now,with the excuse of "quality of life improvements" the game plays itself to a great extent; whatever it doesn't do for you it tells you how to do it ("Move away from the front of the fire-breathing dragon when he breaths fire." Ow really? So that was what all that fire in its nostrils and that inhaling move were about huh? Would you look at that!) and it has lost so much of its gaming feel as well as its open world feel. It's like it's filled with comfortable little hubs, to obtain and carry out comfortable little quests about dispatching enemies that pretty much die on their own and collect things that shine like watchtowers, because thinking, trying, failing and trying again, adjusting, searching, interacting in depth, getting challenged and all the others elements of videogames are, for some reason synonymous with forbidden things in an adventuring videogame of all things. Hence why I mentioned quantity. Developing 8-10 zones with extremely guided activities is far less time-consuming and far cheaper than 30+ zones filled with content, that increases even more due to the interaction of the content of one zone with another's.

There is also the mythical beginner, that for what whatever reason, according to the developers is unable to learn how to play the game,and thus has to be humored through the leveling process by the game feigning to be beaten by him/her. Nevermind the way so many gamers started as... what else but beginners, and slowly, but steadily became increasingly better performing at games. Somehow the gene that allowed people to get better at activities by trying them out, and allowed 7-year olds to be able to play challenging games, has become extinct it seems.

I do understand the practical limitations of maintaining a genuine open world game. It's just too expensive and time-consuming for most developers, and a really bad time for Blizzard to go about convincing their investors to support such a move now, that the game is declining in profits. But theoreticaly, to me, that is the reason why the game feels so stale:that regardless of the developers intentions/limitations, it is no longer the open world game it was supposed to be and was during vanilla.

[Duronos]

All I heard is that people seem to like World of Queuecraft, sorry but afking in a city and just waiting for you queue to pop? Nope, not my bag of apples. If I were going to afk in Orgrimmar then you can sure as hell know I'm watching porn.

[Otimus]

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?

I agree a lot with this. Major truthbombs!

[Duronos]

..and then you have sites that spoil everything on day 1.

I know, the argument is "Don't visit them". I feel it is simlar to the argument "If you hate LFR don't do it" which people scream is an unfair argument though

Well it kind of is, if people are taking an easy way to get gear while you decided, "You're right I don't have to do it but then that makes me feel like shit because everyone will stay ahead of me with minimal work", then you just end up feeling like shit. There is a damn reason why I love playing Vanilla and BC and it's not nostalgia, I'm at level 35 already on a Vanilla server and I can tell you I'm having a blast, it's fully Blizzlike too just to make it even better.

Also if you want to keep your casuals playing even longer, you make a game where you can always progress because there is just to much content for them to progress. That was me in Vanilla and BC (though I raided a lot more in BC) and that is what kept me going, knowing there was a new adventure around the corner every time, I mean it really must suck to be hardcore and destroying content like no other.

[Otimus]

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.

I think there's a WHOLE lot of truth in the idea that Cata-Panda raiding was squarely catered at making raids for existing raiders, and not attracting new people to it, if that's at all what you were sort of getting at there. (Flex not withstanding, however.)

[Deleted]

What's the point in downloading movies then? Just go to the cinema, watch it once, and never bother with it again. When a movie is good, some people watch it many times. Here's why if there is no loot, people might do it more than once.
P.S. You know that making a LFR difficulty of a raid is simple copy the files and change numbers in the scripts, right? It's not like Blizzard will spend months and something people will do only few times, at the most

Imagine if you went to the cinema a couple weeks after a film was released. The film won't play unless 24 other people are in the theater with you. Same problem with LFR. Almost everyone would see it once roughly when it was released, and any latecomers probably wouldn't get to see it at all. Content needs to be repeatable, and offering gear rewards is the best way to do that.

[Duronos]

Yes, but...

-Classic covered 60 levels
-Classic started with you being poor and no economy, getting money was hard
-Classic didn't allow you to even ride for 40 levels
-Classic didn't have fansite spoiling everything on day 1

Apples and oranges..already in TBC, players raced to lv 70 in 24 hrs or so.

I rolled Warlock on the Vanilla server... You know why now and I can't disagree with that statement in any way shape or form, I'm a poor little fuck.

[Otimus]

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.

The problem lies in that people were quitting, and Blizzard made these changes to try and stop it. You can't blame casuals for Blizzard's reaction to keep a large portion of it's playerbase.

[Deleted]

If they had 40 hours a week, could find a guild, were on a decetn sized server, didn't have to put up with constant guild hopping etc yeah.

Oh don't be ridiculous. Raids became puggable a couple patches after release. Even BT and Hyjal near the end. Everything else bar Sunwell could be progressed through on a 12-20 hour raid schedule. Still not that casual, true.

[Otimus]

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.

Yes, we understand, everyone understands why it happens, that doesn't change the fact that it DOES happen, and there's really no getting around that, less you host your own group, and, inevitably, and highly likely massively fail at it. It's one big catch 22, isn't it?

[Kharalla]

I don't mind running lfr most of the time. I'm in a guild of primarily friends, some rl some not. I was running a 10 man raid group until recently when we switched to Flex. However... as the 10 man we were doing ToT and were stuck on Council. People got frustrated and wanted to go do Siege, I tried to point out we couldn't even clear ToT how were we going to do in SoO, but they insisted so I said fine we'll go as a flex so more can come with. Now we're stuck on 2nd boss in SoO. I have people that aren't the greatest players in the world, some that are slow to move out of stuff, some that take several dozen tries before they figure out a new mechanic, etc. I can't kick them from the raid because they're friends and I'd lose half my raid if I even thought about it.

So for people like me (and most of my raiders) lfr is a way for us to see end game content and perhaps pick up some gear that will increase our dps and heals and enable us to possibly just power through so of the mechanics some of the others are having issues with.

[Deleted]

You must be a really slow typer if writing "/2 LFM/LFG for Daily HC" takes you hours.

Honestly haha, how could it possibly have taken you hours. That is just a laughable exaggeration. During the entire WotLK I did countless of daily HCs and making the group never took more than 5 mins. You could even use the WotLK dungeon finder (Hey some people remember that one), and you often found half your group.
After a few weeks you made enough friends to stop using /2 and just ask your friendslist.

My guess is he was playing a hybrid dps unpopular in TBC heroics. Especially arms warriors. No cc, no threat control, and their standard dps rotation broke cc in an aoe and left bleeds on them.
Or he was the type that only tried to join a half full group instead of bothering to make his own. And didn't keep a friends list of tanks and healers from successful runs.

Or, to be fair, he could have been on a dead server. So there's that.

My experience as a tank or healer is they took 10 minutes at most to round up a group, less once you developed a reputation for competence and had a good contacts list. As a warlock it took a bit longer, but that class was always popular for crowd control so that helped.

[Gilian]

You mean the change where its already hard baked into the next expansion as the same LFR we have right now? Why do we have to get over lfr and accept change when LFR is not going anywhere and isn't changing? LOL! Who is sounding butthurt here? I'm a raider who enjoys going into LFR to progress my character and do an hour long activity with my guild.

Accept change! Lol! HAhahahahaha!

Why would I be butthurt? I don't even do LFR anymore. At least I can tell LFR has major problems and I try to find solutions while you are complaining about complainers (butthurt).

There are constant threads about problems in and around LFR on the official forums. About too long queues, loot, attitudes of players and a lot more. I think having more control over who you group up with will reduce these problems a lot. If the player has more control then it becomes their responsibility and something can be done about their bad experiences unlike now where you have no control at all over what will happen in LFR other than your own performance and helpful attitude. It is actually more fun to play with people you want to play with than being put in a group with 24 random people.

[Vanisari]

I'm pretty sure if Method, Midwinter and Blood Legion all went on strike at the start I next expansion Blizzard would scramble to get them back. Why? Because they are the players who have stayed here for a long time. The ones who don't quit because they have bad loot luck or got nerfed.

Blizz wouldn't care. If all those guilds left the game forever they would simply be replaced. Now, if every non-heroic raiding player left THEN Blizz would scramble to get people back.

[khalltusk]

Oh don't be ridiculous. Raids became puggable a couple patches after release. Even BT and Hyjal near the end. Everything else bar Sunwell could be progressed through on a 12-20 hour raid schedule. Still not that casual, true.

My guild cleared sunwell on a 8 hour raid a week schedule. But even I know that it was rather exclusive.

[Vanisari]

yup

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

WoW endgame only has 2 things that NEED to be challenging. That's raiding and PvP. We don't need hard 5 mans. You think that average players want to sit there for 2 hours wiping in a 5 man? We tried that in Cata remember? How did that go?

[DeadmanWalking]

Why would I be butthurt? I don't even do LFR anymore. At least I can tell LFR has major problems and I try to find solutions while you are complaining about complainers (butthurt).

The only solution you are offering is to remove LFR, not fix LFR so it works better. Removing LFR does not fix the problem that casuals need content and so long as that content is raid based content then all the resources can be used to make Raids better. The reason Flex can not remove LFR is because not everyone is on a skill level where they would be welcome in a flex and not everyone can dedicate a scheduled amount of time to join a flex. There are a large portion of the player base that fit into these groups and they need something to occupy them and so long as they are consuming sloppy seconds of raid material we raiders continue to get as much raid content as we can handle.

[Otimus]

WoW endgame only has 2 things that NEED to be challenging. That's raiding and PvP. We don't need hard 5 mans. You think that average players want to sit there for 2 hours wiping in a 5 man? We tried that in Cata remember? How did that go?

The real problem with that, I think, was there was no teaching and there was no ramp up. Things were easy, till they weren't easy. That's a terrible way to design things, and it's why it bit them in the ass. Go back a couple of responses, and see my idea that involves leveling with proving grounds-esque scenarios. That's the kind of things this game needs, I think, among other things. Nothing really prepares people for anything in this game, and the rest of the community has little to no patience for it, which causes a crock pot of problems.

[Hulkovius]

Personally I dont see LFR as a casual way of see the End game or experience the new raid instance.

1) To get in to LFR as healer or tank - Queues differ but usually u get to join a grp in 1-10 mins. But for DPS its most likely 20 mins+ perhaps even 50 mins
2) when u are already in u might join a grp that already finished of 1-2 or even 3 bosses which means that u have to rejoin.
3) if u are in a full grp rdy to rumble u will most likely have to spend at least 1,5- 2 hours in the raid. Faster perhaps with a good grp but most likely not during this early stage.
4) you have to do all this for 3 more parts
5) ppl leave, disconnect AFK and the grp have to idle for god knows how long.
6) there is prolly more to add...


Adding all this time together with queues, wiping and raiding in LFR u easily fit in a 2-3 nights per week raiding schedule.

Casual LFR isnt Casual. It takes time and is retarded. If u want ppl to improve, make the game hard. Flex should by all means be the easiest difficulty.

Personally LFR is just another way of getting some upgrades for an alt which is most welcome of course but I cba struggle with idiots when I am already undergeared and cant carry the grp.