LFR: Success or Failure?

[Bullettime]

They should refocus from raids. Raiding should not be the end game for everybody and there are many things I like about Legion where they are shifting the focus of end game. The Mythic Dungeon system, the world bounty quests, etc. I'm hoping people remember that there are things to do beyond raiding and that just going out into the world with a group of friends and killing a rare spawn or sacking a horde camp and killing the other faction is in fact fun to.

Oh I absolutely agree. I'm just more arguing that raid accessibility was a necessity with the way Blizzard has prioritized endgame content and not so much from casual complaints.

Raiding, ideally, should be something that's more for a niche audience and a feat to complete. But it has to be massively accessible if it continues to be the sole focus of endgame play with only small bread crumbs outside of it. Legion's systems look interesting in that regard.

[Deleted]

Actually it was created, admittedly, so Blizzard could justify the budget that went into making large scale epic raids. Otherwise, raids were going to be cut significantly in size to better reflect the amount of players that would be experiencing the content

Exactly, the attempt to make raid areas more accessible was very much a case of the developers attempting to save what was for many their own favourite max level pastime. They even succeeded at doing so, if only for an expansion and a half, and not without leaving the rest of the max level gameplay in a significantly worse state.

[Perkunas]

I agree here as well.

Raiding should be very niche and inaccessible. The real problem is that (real) raiding is sold like THE endgame by Blizz and they expected casuals to have common sense and know LFR's spot on the difficulty curve (which always dictates rewards), but they don't have any of that and expect good rewards for what they do, comparable to other difficulties.

Which I find crazy, given the fact that LFR is just a malignant appendice that was artificially grown on the body of raiding during Dragon Soul. It's not even raiding as we understood it, it a random pug pinata murdering atrocity. Any person with common sense would not expect same type of reward from such a different activity.

Raiding should be niche and exclusive, but it shouldn't take the brunt of the end game resources. I think we're too far gone though. You can't pull the stingray barb out of the heart now otherwise we'll just bleed out and Bob's your uncle.

[Riistov]

I was just going to reply, this sounds like a Jaylock thread. It's nice to be right.

[Lucky Fable]

Exactly, the attempt to make raid areas more accessible was very much a case of the developers attempting to save what was for many their own favourite max level pastime. They even succeeded at doing so, if only for an expansion and a half, and not without leaving the rest of the max level gameplay in a significantly worse state.

This doesn't really make any sense... WoW was most profitable when raiding was the end game... vanilla and tbc would not of done better without that content.

The issue is blizzard wanted to go after a larger audience that was never theirs to have. The phone game players. Slowly since wrath they changed a long steady rewarding progression game into log in and get free rewards.

Why do people think WoD sold so many copies? They marketed it as a return to the burning crusade back to when the game was better. Hell the WoD beta before garrisons had all the rewards attached to them and dungeons where tuned properly was actually a better game then the live version...

Blizzards problem is they had a product that was marketed towards hardcore gamers and it sold like pancakes made of crack. They where not happy with just that and went after the casual players without realizing casual players won't actually buy a game much less pay a monthly fee they buy cosmetic items...


I don't know if blizzard could earn back their old core audience most of them feel utterly betrayed after the first month of WoD.

[Daffan]

This LFR expansion was absolutely too rewarding. If content is easier to complete than a normal dungeon, should it award gear better than a heroic dungeon? What's the logic behind that? And that's just talking about the first tier of LFR. It's not just LFR that's the problem here, though; honor gear right now offers ilvl 700 loot. Mythic BRF ilvl loot for honor gear? And then we have the AH that's littered with raiding/crafting epics, the BMAH... it's a little ridiculous to me.

So what's the problem? The problem is that every piece of content before the current tier's content is obsolete and irrelevant. Who the hell runs dungeons for progression? Is Mythic+ supposed to solve that when LFR is likely going to just make the gear irrelevant by offering tier loot (talking about the average player here)? And who the hell is going to run older raids to advance themselves when they can run LFR to get better loot for almost no effort? Is LFR just meant to be the thing Blizzard throws at casuals and calls end-game to appease them?

LFR as a story mode would be fine. When we're talking about how high/low the ilvl of gear has to be for people to play it, doesn't that kinda mean people don't want to do the content for any other reason than easy epics? Sure, if LFR gear actually helped you progress your main I would think ilvl would be an issue, but what progression is left for the average non-raider after they've decked themselves out in those easily obtained epics?

I'd rather see Blizzard remove the story driven aspects from completely so that people don't feel the need to experience them. Not being able to see the story throughout the expansion because you don't have the time/skill is a very valid and reasonable complaint to make. Having four difficulties of raiding and calling it a day for content creation is not something I'm okay with moving forward, but that's what we're seeing again in Legion. Putting a greater rift design on dungeons and calling it a day for content creation is not something I'm okay with, either.

I believe the main reason we have these multiple difficulties is because Blizzard cannot keep up with content creation/doesn't want to invest in it. If there was a ton of stuff to do from the beginning of the expansion, we wouldn't need to have LFR for casuals. We wouldn't need to have Mythic+ to rerun the same ten dungeons a million times. Everyone would have so much to do that they wouldn't ever dream of being able to complete it all. That's what I felt like in vanilla/TBC, and because of that I didn't care where the hell my $15 a month was going (nor did I ever think about it) because I felt like I was getting the best deal of all time for a video game, regardless. There were times when I only raided, there were times when I only PvP'ed, but throughout it all I couldn't give a damn because for $15 a month I was enjoying my favorite game of all time with my friends. Now, for that same $15 a month, I'm getting very little content with multiple difficulties.

Basically my thoughts.

But if you dare take away the free source of gear (LFR, pvp, baleful), people complain. If you don't take it away - then the old content becomes irrelevant and people complain there is nothing to do.

Make hard and challenging content that lasts months - omg elitist

Make it easy, so any bad can complete it in 1 day - omg there is nothing to do

[Avaddon]

This thread: Success or Failure?

[K2 Kaitu]

I wouldn't agree that players are worse than before.

In every expansion, a pretty sizeable portion of players are bad regardless of content like LFR being in or not. The difference now is that they're more in the spotlight because they interact more with well geared players (and their alts) because of Legendary quests.

There are lots of people who casually play the game, and I think the LFR isn't too bad of a way for them to experience a 'lite' version of something that they can't really put the time in to, or don't want to show up 2-3 times a week.

Like I said before, I don't think LFR is inherently the problem that creates bad players, because bad players always exist. It's just now instead of them going around doing solo content, they're more likely to meet decent/good players in LFR who will notice the bad players.

Also in my own opinion, I think MoP's style of LFR difficulty/gear rewards was nice, because it did take effort to organize your team to get shit done if there weren't 3 or 4 people roflstomping everything. And having tier be a reward gives the casual player a feel of accomplishment when downing the boss and joy when getting a piece of gear. It also gives the more experienced players a chance to test out tier sets on their alts to see which class may be worth picking up.

I really disliked the LFR armor pieces being super poor aesthetically, because no one wants to feel they're worth less than others, even if they are. This game is to have fun, not to get hammered by others for doing an easier form of content. I used to be of the "get rid of LFR" mindset to the extreme, but honestly, what is the issue? It doesn't necessarily hurt you, hell it's a gateway for more potential raiders, because they see that this may be a bit easy and go try normal/heroic/mythic and maybe they'll fumble around and fail, but people will become better.

Also, people forget that it's other people playing the game. Would you be happy if your little brother/sister/son/daughter was starting to play the game and they got cussed out in like 8 lines of raid chat because someone doesn't know how to control their emotion? LFR is a nice, inclusive method of showing players content, giving them some worthwhile gear, and making their WoW experience perhaps a bit better.

Bottomline: try to see it from other people's eyes.

P.S. I am a mythic 13/13 raider, doesn't mean much this late, but I do have several alts who I run through LFR, and the experience feels a bit depressing. There's always the Heroic mediocre DPS verbally shitting on other people because he has a Prophecy of Doom/Archi trinket, and feels the need to highlight his superiority by cussing out strangers he doesn't know. The gear that drops feels weak and sad, really. We traded difficulty for shittier pieces and I feel like it was a bad one. I would rather take 7 wipes to Thok and getting my tier helm than I would LFR Mannoroth with a single attempt for a piece of shit piece.

Edit: Some grammar issues.

Also I though I'd add in some of my personal commentary, because like I said before, I used to be of the "get rid of LFR, it's shit and for bad players" mindset. I was toxic, ragey, and a colossal douche to people I didn't know. So when I acted like a douche to them, it's obvious they'd retaliate. It took me 4 years and emotional maturity to figure out that this is pointless. I am making myself mad, I am making others feel like shit, for no reason than to appease my ego, or getting angry because these people weren't as good as me.

[Thetruth1400]

The only success it has had is that it has allowed more people entry without any commitment.

Overall, it's a huge failure that has probably negatively impacted to the game that it will never recover.
- No interaction needed.
- No talking needed.
- Over easy to the point it doesn't make you learn the fight for harder difficulties.
- Adds to burnout because it's just another level of difficulty.
- Severely takes away from the excitement of going in, seeing things, and defeating bosses for the first time.
- Contributes to the gear bloat.

I could go on because there are tons more ways, but I think you get the point.

So back to my point of it negatively impacting the game, it's pretty obvious that people will buy the same game over and over again. Look at the top 10 grossing Triple A titles from 2015:

Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)
Star Wars Battlefront (Xbox One, PS4, PC)
Fallout 4 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
Madden NFL 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)
NBA 2K16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)
Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, PC)
Rainbow Six Siege (Xbox One, PS4, PC)
Minecraft (360, Xbox One, PS4, PS3)
Minecraft: Story Mode (360, Xbox One, PS4, PS3)
FIFA 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

Not a single new, original idea in the lot. Why Blizzard thought they had to reinvent the wheel and add in the glorified spectator mode, I'll never understand. The game was growing and continued to grow until it came into existence. As soon as it did, subs starting to take a dive. As each expansion shifted more and more towards ease of access, the subs continued to decline. Again, as you see above, games don't have to be revolutionary to sell and be successful. It's not just about the age of a game, because, again, above.

Call of Duty first came out in 2003. 2004 was their first version with online multiplayer.
Fallout originated in 1997.
There have been 34 Madden games.
Grand Theft Auto V broke 7 world records for it's release.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

lol ~ Your title for the thread is silly given you used the thumbs down symbol. You obviously aren't asking; you're telling. Doesn't matter if we agree with you; that's a silly way to start the thread.

[Lucky Fable]

Depends on the type of player you are.

If you are interested in rewards you tend to like lfr.

If you are interested in linear progression you dislike it.

I feel I should note though most people tend to agree the experience of lfr is lack luster at best even those that support it. The fact loot is brought up so often speaks to players true motivations towards it.

[Deleted]

This thread: Success or Failure?

It's a Jaylock thread, it's a guaranteed failure that's bound to be filled with shitposts (like mine right here)

[tylenol]

Can't find any detailed armory stats for WoD like this one MMOc did for MoP, clearly a success, WoD? failure, Legion? success

[nekobaka]

Can't find any detailed armory stats for WoD like this one MMOc did for MoP, clearly a success, WoD? failure, Legion? success

Thank you, was trying to find that one earlier. One of the odd things is by overall percent of population was there a 20% drop off of those who did the first wing not bother to stick to see the story to the end. The stats are also gathered on active armory accounts. Was LFR too hard, more preferred endgame content outside of raids, players bored, or a mix of all the above? Nearly half of the active population didnt bother to experience the story to the end despite the accessibility of LFR. A far drop off from DS which was upwards of 80% if I recall correctly. What in the world happened to cause such a large drop off of what is at minimum a one time participation rate?

[roahn the warlock]

I suppose that depends entirely on the definition of success.

It is in my opinion that LFR is a failure in that there likely could have been a better solution, the solution in my opinion being Flex mode from MoP. I also believe it's a failure because it invalidates world content and creates a boring end-game for what I would guess is roughly 60% of players.

I assume players who enjoy it would call it a success.

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No, but there are more people playing golf that do not compete in the PGA.

Is Mythic useless if only a minority are only interested in it?

Not entirely, Mythic serves the same purpose of PGA golf. It is marketing for the rest of the server, you may have "wised up", or grown cynical. But let's be honest with ourselves, we all had a point in our lives where even looking sweet in a video game was enough incentive to keep trying.

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With WoD LFR I agree, the crowd that LFR is aimed at just doesn't really go any further than LFR. But from a personal viewpoint I think that's primarily because WoD LFR prepares you for organized raiding neither with useful gear or useful knowledge, as MoP LFR did.

I have some problems with this post, as it seems to be popular about the majority of pro-LFR-MMO-champion... people.

Let's (attempt to and likely fail at) objectively take a look at both MoP LFR, and WoD LFR. I can only use my memory, experience, and what I recall of the popular opinions of both eras of raiding.

As a mythic raider, I do not see a major difference in difficulty between both versions of LFR, but, assuming that you are correct and there is a difference. I am unsure as to whether or not you are the majority here. In fact, I would argue that you are just as bad as the mythic raiders in this scenario.

Let me use one prime example. LFR archimonde. When LFR archie was released it was called "too difficult". With this in mind I bring to mention that Fatboss, as a joke, did LFR archimonde with no gear that was visible on the character (Save weapons) this created an average ILvl that is equivalent to gear from normal mode Dragon soul.

So, this begs to question, is LFR too easy, or too hard. I recall MoP LFR, many many many bosses in that raid resulted in 10 stacks of determination. At that point difficulty is basically just frustration.

Continuing is my subjective opinion. Based on my theories

I believe what WoD blizzard attempted to do, was make normal mode for people like you, and LFR was truely meant for the worst of the worst. I believe that LFR is not one demographic, but that the majority of LFR players are absolutely awful at the game.

I believe that if I am correct, this is the best argument for the removal of LFR. Because you want something more difficult, and the people who like WoD LFR, who need WoD LFR, truly belong doing world content, dungeons, and dailies.

I believe they need to make normal mode as accessible as Flex from MoP.

[nekobaka]

Not entirely, Mythic serves the same purpose of PGA golf. It is marketing for the rest of the server, you may have "wised up", or grown cynical. But let's be honest with ourselves, we all had a point in our lives where even looking sweet in a video game was enough incentive to keep trying.

Brings back the memories of wanting the same equipment as the pros. Thankfully there are sales reps from time to time and I got to demo some of the big head titanium woods and early irons. Never could get used to the feel of the gear available at the time and stuck with less expensive steel irons and woods. Expensive new clubs is not going to make me all of a sudden a better player.

Not sure whats up with the hate of the top level players. Many of them even help the community with play guides. Some even make mods and others help contribute data for the mods. It is thanks to such players I can take a break from the game and find helpful guides when I come back that save me time and improve my overall gameplay experience.

[Leithz]

I think it was one of the worst idea WoW dev's ever had.

Exclusivity is good. It gives players something to achieve, a challenge to accomplish ! It made the raids feel epic. Now I can just open a menu, press a button and steamroll everything while watching something else on another screen and eating potato chips with my left hand because it's that easy. A raid. From a menu. How stupid is that ?
There's also that "social aspect" nonexistant but that's another issue the game is facing and while it's not only relative to the raid finder, it's good to mention it too.

I don't even understand while people are even defending this crap. Okay, I got it, some people don't got the time to do it, but that's not an excuse. If you can't raid, then too bad, sucks for you, go find another game with some other form of end game that might fit your agenda better. Raids should be something one should be willing to invest themselves into, even just a little, to participate. Otherwise they are just a big dumb meaningless pile of pixels.
Not to mention it led to some bs when it comes to the raid difficulties. For exemple in WotLK the difficulties they made for that xpac were actually good : They felt different from one another (Because of the difference of 10 and 25 man raids) and made it accessible for the largest part of the playerbase. How they managed to fuck up the only form of end game they are good at producing, I don't know, but it sucks.

But hey, they won't remove it, not that this entitled playerbase of ours has grown so accustomed of it.

[roahn the warlock]

Brings back the memories of wanting the same equipment as the pros. Thankfully there are sales reps from time to time and I got to demo some of the big head titanium woods and early irons. Never could get used to the feel of the gear available at the time and stuck with less expensive steel irons and woods. Expensive new clubs is not going to make me all of a sudden a better player.

Not sure whats up with the hate of the top level players. Many of them even help the community with play guides. Some even make mods and others help contribute data for the mods. It is thanks to such players I can take a break from the game and find helpful guides when I come back that save me time and improve my overall gameplay experience.

I believe the hate comes from the people who aren't actually very good, but are good enough to be better than most. You see, there are players who enjoy going into lower difficulties to stroke their epeen. These players become the face of hardcore raiders. These 15 year old jackasses who use the term Fag as a casual insult.

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I think it was one of the worst idea WoW dev's ever had.

Exclusivity is good. It gives players something to achieve, a challenge to accomplish ! It made the raids feel epic. Now I can just open a menu, press a button and steamroll everything while watching something else on another screen and eating potato chips with my left hand because it's that easy. A raid. From a menu. How stupid is that ?
There's also that "social aspect" nonexistant but that's another issue the game is facing and while it's not only relative to the raid finder, it's good to mention it too.

I don't even understand while people are even defending this crap. Okay, I got it, some people don't got the time to do it, but that's not an excuse. If you can't raid, then too bad, sucks for you, go find another game with some other form of end game that might fit your agenda better. Raids should be something one should be willing to invest themselves into, even just a little, to participate. Otherwise they are just a big dumb meaningless pile of pixels.
Not to mention it led to some bs when it comes to the raid difficulties. For exemple in WotLK the difficulties they made for that xpac were actually good : They felt different from one another (Because of the difference of 10 and 25 man raids) and made it accessible for the largest part of the playerbase. How they managed to fuck up the only form of end game they are good at producing, I don't know, but it sucks.

But hey, they won't remove it, not that this entitled playerbase of ours has grown so accustomed of it.

Many people suggest too much development time is spent on raiding, while I disagree that too much time is spent on raiding, since Wotlk the time spent on other content outside of raiding has gone down each x pack (Save MoP, which was the saving grace of other content, which was made meaningless by LFR anyway, which caused WoD)

*Takes a deep breath* Back on point, from their perspective, our slice of the pie has remained the same, as their slices have grown smaller, though they miss that infact the entire pie has shrunk. And it isn't raiders fault our slice stayed the same size. But players make the mistake of asking our slice to become smaller, instead of asking for a bigger pie.

I'm hungry.

[Deleted]

This doesn't really make any sense... WoW was most profitable when raiding was the end game... vanilla and tbc would not of done better without that content.

I'm not saying end-game, I'm talking about max. level content. For most people, raiding was never the main thing, even at max. level. But when Blizzard kept making raids and more raids, and people started to complain about rehashed max. level content in the form of reputation dailies and the like (which haven't significantly changed since TBC), it came time to choose between less raiding and more other forms of max. level content. Blizzard then decided they would go all in on raiding and placate the masses by introducing LFR. To their credit, it even worked for a while, but it has left the game in a much worse state.

[Lucky Fable]

I'm not saying end-game, I'm talking about max. level content. For most people, raiding was never the main thing, even at max. level. But when Blizzard kept making raids and more raids, and people started to complain about rehashed max. level content in the form of reputation dailies and the like (which haven't significantly changed since TBC), it came time to choose between less raiding and more other forms of max. level content. Blizzard then decided they would go all in on raiding and placate the masses by introducing LFR. To their credit, it even worked for a while, but it has left the game in a much worse state.

I agree. Dungeons should of been added in far greater numbers as well as something I feel is over looked...

Over time blizzard has removed complexities from classes and instead moved them onto bosses. If you look at most old wow bosses they have far simpler mechanics but where harder to complete due to the restrictions and limits placed on the player by their class.

I can't say for certain since I am a outsider looking in but I would have to imagine this plays a role in the time it takes to complete content.