I disagree, that is not the goal of LFR, it is meant to provide single players content, so that they remain subbed longer, after reaching max level and doing the 5 mans a bunch of time.
It has nearly zero option of failure, because it is the only way to lure a single player into a multiplayer gameplay, same way as world bosses (I still have to see a failure on kazzak, and i have done it dozens of times), because single players have the lowest tolerance possible, for failure on a multiplayer gameplay.
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Nope, that is not it. Blizz is trying to engage LFR players into other activities, because i am afraid that although it is true that LFR as end game content, is better than no content at all, it is not exactly great as subs retention mechanism.
I suspect in WOD they were aiming to move the playerbase from LFR to normal, hoping that way those players would engage into social relationships, that at the end of the day are the most important factor in retaining players.
Problem is, the single player mentality i described, it is not interested in any scheduling, an even a forgiving difficulty as normal, requires scheduling and quite a bigger social interaction, that the single player mindset is not interested in at all, that is why among other reasons they failed hard.
But i am sure if LFR had always been a success in terms of subs retention rates, it would have remained untouched since it was introducted into the game.
They also, for some bizarre reason, tuned up the difficulty of normal mode in HM/BRF vs. where it had been in SoO.
I knew a raid group (from other MMOs) that came to WoW at the end of MoP due to the Flex mechanism being added. They had a fine time in SoO, doing Flex and some Normal. But in WoD they struggled in N HM, not clearing it before BRF came out, and gave up shortly after that. The idea that normal mode in WoD would be for "friends and family" guilds was a lie. Poor scaling of raid difficulty with size in flex mode probably didn't help.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
That's anecdotal evidence but you are likely correct in that the dev's missed the mark w/ the difficulty of Normal HM/BRF. By the time they'd realized it, the game was already bleeding customers at an unprecedented rate so I think they just kind of threw their hands in their, said "Fuck it," and decided it was something which needed to be moved to the To-Do list of shit to fix in Legion.
well the thing is not only lfr players got screwed - anyone besides mythic raiders got screwed royaly without vaseline as they removed any other content from game besides raiding in desperate try to push people into raiding which failed completly and utterly - i bet that atm lfr is the only reason why raiding didnt got completly dissected from legion
incomptence - pure incompetence - that the reason - but i blame blizzard politics for it - they knew for years that tuning is a big issue yet they let it slide again and again instead fire incompetent devs who are responsible for this shit.
Last edited by kamuimac; 2016-05-23 at 12:46 PM.
Well maybe they failed at finding a correct tuning, would not be the first time, or they thought flex being too easy would not help in the social interaction they were looking for.
Also i have been told by friends that the scaling was terrible in heroic, so maybe they need more time to get the hang of the scaling in any difficulty mode.
I think we're on the same page here. You bring up another good point: the decline in subs was unprecedentedly fast this time, and Blizzard's already slow decision loop was pretty clearly not fast enough to respond. They need to fix that. It could be (I speculate here) that internal political divisions mean they have to collect enough data to make an ironclad case to the team for changes, and that just takes too long.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
They probably thought that 6.2 will stop the bleeding. When it came clear that was not the case
they did the same as in the previous expansion and introduced item upgrades. This time much faster.
5.4 ... 2013-09-10 SoO, Timeless Isle and 0/2 item upgrades
5.4.8 . 2014-05-19 0/4 item upgrades
6.2 ... 2015-06-23 HFC and Tanaan
6.2.3 . 2015-11-17 0/2 item upgrades
That's what happens when you give the reins of the game to EQ neckbeards and mythic raiders.
They design raids, and then try to design everything else with the leftovers from raids (not counting leveling content, which seems to be a separate budget, only talking about endgame).
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Yeah, I mean, it's amazing rocket science: when you provide zero world content for players, it doesn't work. Amazing, huh?
Sometimes I wonder what goes on in the heads of Blizzard's lead devs.
MMO player
WoW: 2006-2020 || EvE: 2013-2020 // 2023- || FFXIV: 2020- || Lost Ark: 2022-
I guess its just the 80-20 rule. 20 percent of the players can only make through 80 percent of the game which makes sense. This will not make sense to everyone.
Nope. I'm more entertained by knowing there is stuff out there which I have not beaten yet (and might never), than by being forced into activities that actually bring me no enjoyment just because they gated some reward behind there.
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True. I unsubbed for the first time. The reason was garrisons. Rewards too good to pass on, yet utterly mind numbing boring game-play. Logging in felt so much like a chore, that I just quit.
Remove RAIDING= more dev time to develop other content for non raiders win/win
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Totally true. I know when my kids go to window.shop at Eb games at all the games they will never be able to buy and play they are totally entertained.....
Because it is harder then what came before it... You finally got your deep and involved non raid content and you are in a head long rush to throw it aside for lfr raid gear... why?
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No content save for the original wow leveling from 1-60 has provided content anywhere near as used as raiding though seems kind of foolish to throw away their number one retainer of players.
As for new content has made past content obsolete: all they need to do is introduce scaling. They dropped the ball totally on that one. Scale everything, including the rewards and all the content suddenly becomes relevant again.
As for your example about flex hurting raiding. In your example, you could raid on all three of those nights without sitting someone. How did that hurt your team or guild? I remember when it was 10 or 25 man set, people would have to sit. Most players are not going to sit long before they leave the team and guild...
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Let's be honest here...
Would Karazhan or Black temple be as fun if they had 4 raid difficulties...think about that for a second casuals. Imagine if Karazhan had 4 raid difficulties. It's piss poor design by Blizzard and it's not going to change because this game is awful now and isn't even an MMO anymore. You log in, click on menu's, rarely have the need to interact with other players, gear is given to you without any effort. Content is completed by everyone at the same time more or less and people complain there is 'nothing' to do. Maybe because the entire fucking game is so godamn easy now and can now be completed within 3 weeks of starting a fresh character.
Genuinely sick of casuals. Sick of people who don't like difficulty. Sick of people who don't want to devote time to WoW. Sick of the dumbass argument 'we don't have time to play'....THEN DONT WHINE AND BITCH to Blizzard to change the game to what you want. THe game was 1000x better when it took a long time to do stuff and exclusivity was a thing.
I was referring to the size of raids before LFR. Some of them were large but adding LFR added another reason to create large raids.
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The problem is you need those people who want easy content to justify Blizzard to spend so much on larger raids.