Acceptable number of LFR wipes?

[Zulkhan]

It would still be a lot easier than normal, but it would punish afking/autohitting.

Something warranting seven and more wipes look quite a Normal-kind of difficulty. I mean, let's not forget Normal itself ain't anything crazy right now. But auto-queueing brings a number of issues. There's a reason if Mythic dungeons aren't auto-queueing based. And while even Heroics can occasionally be tedious at the beginning, the limited number of people involved diminishes the issue.

Even lfr players say it's too easy though. Some also want sth remotely challenging in lfr, even if the only challenge would be to not afk for 30 min and expect rewards afterwards.

That's not going to punish afkers, it's going to punish everyone by increasing the weight these idiots bear for the ultimate success of the encounter. I have no intention to rely on "well, they'll eventually learn the lesson" by wiping on loop for who knows how much time. Because, honestly, I don't give a flying shit about them. If "punish them" most likely mean undermine my own experience then I couldn't give a crap if their laziness gets rewarded.

And I don't think people saying "LFR is too easy" understand the issues behind an auto-queueing system applied to raids. It's the typical proposal that sounds cool on paper but could turn into a literal disaster on live. On the end of the day, LFR is there just to see the content, not to offer challenges, let alone it can be a decent entry point in terms of gear for anyone planning to do serious raiding but is not carried by X guild. I'm not in favor or against the removal of the feature, I'm fine either way. But considered the way the feature is intended to be, adding "challenges" and "learning curves" could pretty much become only worthy to be removed.

Mind you, I'm not entirely against the idea to make LFR a bit more challenging, but I can assure you I have no intention to wipe 7+ times in a row playing something I don't find madly entertaining to begin with. In that case I wouldn't waste a second of my time on LFR, either doing Normal, Heroic ecc. or not doing anything raid-related at all (depending from my situation).

[judgementofantonidas]

*ANY* mechanic that kills one player (ESPECIALLY TANKS) for another player's inaction, has NO place in a random group like LFR.

Do you even read what you write? In essence you say that LFR should be a completely free ride with no risk of failure and yet still be called raid content.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Thanks for a reasonable post. I agree that i too could simply ignore the mage spamming ice lance thinking hes doing great but i see it quite differently. Every time i see these players i think of them as potentially great raiders trapped in a terrible environment. Raiding is dying and especially at the top level after [M] BRF, half of my guild simply left. (Why they left is an entirely different discussion) I don't think that people will play this game forever, but i would like to see aspiration amongst the community once more. I simply don't see it nowadays to the same extent as in the past, and naturally there are more factors than just LFR that leads to this (even if LFR is the biggest offender)

It's very difficult for me to forget people with this mentality since the path of the game is shaped by the average, and the average is leading it into certain doom. I want this game to be great, as great as i know it could be. Take Vanilla for instance, the game was broken as hell, and a lot of the things in the game made no logical sense, but what the original developers nailed was the right philosophy to facilitate a great MMO. Blizzard didn't fool anybody back then, if you were a newbie you probably knew (yes i know that everyone sucked back then but you get what i mean). This combined with the slower pacing created the possibilty of true aspiration. You didn't kill a difficulty, but rather a boss.

Anyway long response, hope you get my point.

Oh I get your point. Games are typically designed from the top down for a reason and for some reason a lot of people that play WoW don't really understand that. Well to be honest most of them had at one time. But now that their life has moved on beyond it they expect the game and its community to move along with them. Which it really has in a LOT of ways. But to expect it to completely and 100% abandon what it always has been and will likely always will be is kind of an insane act to ask of the game. Sadly they ask it endlessly. But I think of LFR as a stop gap. It keeps a lot of those players with no desire to try or put in effort off my lawn. At the same time it kind of keeps me away from them as well since I don't punish myself with LFR.

Do a lot of them have the potential to become better players? Sure. I kind of believe WoW really isn't that hard of a game with a really low APM requirement. So in that way just about anyone can get pretty damn good at the game with marginal effort. Which is why it is more mind set instead of skill based. At least in my opinion. If someone has the mind set of LFR is fun, rewarding, and good content the odds are their mind set isn't going to mesh with set raid times, 100 wipes per boss, and gear going to other people for the good of the guild. Not to say it is impossible. Just incredibly unlikely, again, in just my opinion.

[badaku]

0. I don't mind LFR existing, but if they're making me go there for the tier pieces, I want out ASAP.

[Deleted]

Oh I get your point. Games are typically designed from the top down for a reason and for some reason a lot of people that play WoW don't really understand that. Well to be honest most of them had at one time. But now that their life has moved on beyond it they expect the game and its community to move along with them. Which it really has in a LOT of ways. But to expect it to completely and 100% abandon what it always has been and will likely always will be is kind of an insane act to ask of the game. Sadly they ask it endlessly. But I think of LFR as a stop gap. It keeps a lot of those players with no desire to try or put in effort off my lawn. At the same time it kind of keeps me away from them as well since I don't punish myself with LFR.

Do a lot of them have the potential to become better players? Sure. I kind of believe WoW really isn't that hard of a game with a really low APM requirement. So in that way just about anyone can get pretty damn good at the game with marginal effort. Which is why it is more mind set instead of skill based. At least in my opinion. If someone has the mind set of LFR is fun, rewarding, and good content the odds are their mind set isn't going to mesh with set raid times, 100 wipes per boss, and gear going to other people for the good of the guild. Not to say it is impossible. Just incredibly unlikely, again, in just my opinion.

Yeah man i hear ya, but i really don't think that the people who liked the older experience has moved on. If you look at Nostalrius for instance, a private server that barely got any coverage (very little from streamers since it was against the ToS) That managed to have 150k Active players (per 10 days, not 30 like retail) leads me to believe that there is a demand. I have had dozens of converations with people that were baffled by how different the game was back then, people who had never tried the older versions and people who ultimately ended up loving this version of the game far more than retail.

As for the potential players being trapped, i absolutely know that ANYONE can do it. I am a very competetive player in every game i pick up and all it took for me to get to the mid/upper echelons of Mythic raiding was doing research. Yes there is a bit of multitasking when raiding sure, but nothing even comparable to other games in terms of mechanics. (Im talking about whats required for Mythic) And yes i know that there are amazing PvE players with good mechanics and excellent game knowledge (but my point is that it's not necessarily needed to succeed)

I do agree that if people have the mindset of having fun with something, then they absolutely should go ahead and enjoy it and do whatever they want (im not trying to judge anyone) But based on my experience this simply isn't the case. I think that LFR has become an instant pad on the back to lazy players who aren't pushed beyond their own comfort zones to seek out glory. As you know the older versions demanded that players put in effort before being rewarded, and i honestly think that this added a lot of value to the game in terms of feel.

Again, i fully get where you are coming from even if i have to disagree.

Thanks for your post, healthy discussion is great and all i could ever ask for.

Peace

[Wingspan]

What kind of roleplaying game has a queue system that teleports you to the place where you have to "raid", it's absolutely terrible.

It seems like a lot of them do. Mainly because there is not an awesome amount of gameplay involved in travelling to an instance. Even early wow had some shortcuts (summoning stones, warlock summons). All of it was for convenience and very few got bent out of shape over it back then. A teleport system just takes the burden off of the people who used to be responsible for it.

I suppose that on a PvP server there might have been something to the trip, but on PvE servers it is just a time-killing, boring trip for the most part.

I don't understand why people would play an MMO and expect the game to be this way. ... I don't think that people should demand the game to be "convenient", don't have time to play an MMO (Massive MULTIPLAYER Online) a genre that tends to be a timesink by default then please play something else.

And I can't understand why someone who places such value in the concept of the MMO would KEEP suggesting that people find another game... which if successful would ACTIVELY chip away at the MM in the MMO. There seems to be a gross logical disconnect here. It makes no sense at all, yet there it is.

The reason you don't see those threads is that Normal/Heroic/Mythic is actural content unlike LFR. Be reasonable and detatch your casual brain for a moment and think about the backlash to Blizzard if they acturally did this.

Content is whatever people like to spend time doing. You can say a lot of things about LFR (and some might actually be true) but denying it as content is simply false, and not really seeing the "bigger picture" (to use your words).

[ComputerNerd]

0. I don't mind LFR existing, but if they're making me go there for the tier pieces, I want out ASAP.

And "who" is making you do that ?
It isn't blizzard.
A convenient route as a consequence of design whether intended by blizzard or not is very different from it being a requirement.
Blizzard do not make it one.
It is certain players that decide if your progress with them requires it not.

LFR is made necessary by the players who are most keen to remove it.
Those who don't want to see that they are the problem.

It removes what is absolutely the worst part of organised raiding, the control element of the "real raiding" community.
EVERY raiding format below mythic is a fraction of the whole.
LFR is a smaller fraction then normal, but is still raiding.

There is this persistent fear of what you don't want to understand.
That people who aren't you have the ability to make their own choices.
And that you aren't making as many of your own as you want to believe.

You do LFR in addition to other formats because of peer pressure.
Therefore it is purely a bad thing, because you are following the crowd and jumping off the cliff like every other lemming.
So it is made a bad thing only by players who don't want to be there, not because it actually is.

[Deleted]

It seems like a lot of them do. Mainly because there is not an awesome amount of gameplay involved in travelling to an instance. Even early wow had some shortcuts (summoning stones, warlock summons). All of it was for convenience and very few got bent out of shape over it back then. A teleport system just takes the burden off of the people who used to be responsible for it.

I disagree. Being able to queue for stuff takes away from the epic feel (atleast for me) and i acturally like having to run to the place that i want to raid etc. As for the summoning stones etc they required 3 ppl (afaik) so 3/5 of the party had to physically run to the instance. Neussance to some? Sure.
But it's one of those where i really don't have sympathy for people being lazy fucks. I was always the one forming groups and running to the place first, so maybe im biased, but it honestly wasn't a big deal at all. I don't like that WoW has become World of QueueCraft and the friends i have spoken to (mainly mythic raiders) felt the same way when i spoke to them about this.

I suppose that on a PvP server there might have been something to the trip, but on PvE servers it is just a time-killing, boring trip for the most part.

Takes away from the feel of the game for me personally.

And I can't understand why someone who places such value in the concept of the MMO would KEEP suggesting that people find another game... which if successful would ACTIVELY chip away at the MM in the MMO. There seems to be a gross logical disconnect here. It makes no sense at all, yet there it is.

It's quite simple acturally. There is a huge flood of people who have tremendous hate for people in my position, who are critical of things being too casual (like LFR) who want others to feel what we have felt. The sense of aspiration that is long gone from the game. When these people turn on you and call you an Elitist asshole for wanting to make the game better you acturally feel quite sad. I have been there, i have been a newbie (got to level 37 in Vanilla doing god knows what) and i fought my way to the top because the game teased me enough. I want others to have that experience, -it's that simple.
It's not that i don't want these players in the game, i want as many people to play the game as possible. But these toxic opinions of people (who often didn't play the earlier versions of WoW) that slander you, call you a nostalgic moron etc for pointing out that the game has deviated very far from it's orignal form can really get to you.

Content is whatever people like to spend time doing. You can say a lot of things about LFR (and some might actually be true) but denying it as content is simply false, and not really seeing the "bigger picture" (to use your words).

Yes, techically LFR can be considered content, correct sir -bravo. Does it have any real meaning though?
The problem with LFR is that there is absolutely no correlation between doing good or bad- you are rewarded exactly the same, THIS is my problem with LFR. I don't think it's healthy to have a large population discouraged from "real raiding" because LFR is more convenient. I think that the current Normal modes makes LFR completely beside the point. Everyone can get into normals, its just a question about moving your ass.

- - - Updated - - -

And "who" is making you do that ?
It isn't blizzard.
A convenient route as a consequence of design whether intended by blizzard or not is very different from it being a requirement.
Blizzard do not make it one.
It is certain players that decide if your progress with them requires it not.

LFR is made necessary by the players who are most keen to remove it.
Those who don't want to see that they are the problem.

It removes what is absolutely the worst part of organised raiding, the control element of the "real raiding" community.
EVERY raiding format below mythic is a fraction of the whole.
LFR is a smaller fraction then normal, but is still raiding.

There is this persistent fear of what you don't want to understand.
That people who aren't you have the ability to make their own choices.
And that you aren't making as many of your own as you want to believe.

You do LFR in addition to other formats because of peer pressure.
Therefore it is purely a bad thing, because you are following the crowd and jumping off the cliff like every other lemming.
So it is made a bad thing only by players who don't want to be there, not because it actually is.

So you don't see ANY problems with having LFR even in the longterm? Such as a dwindling raiding population (in general)? Also, do you honestly consider LFR raiding? A place with no mechanics, organisation and free rewards for simply pressing a button?

As i said earlier i could choose to not give a fuck about any of this, but i honestly see great damage done to the game by this feature alone. (And YES there are many things i would consider wrong with the game but LFR takes the cake for me)

[Deleted]

Why ?

Why are the wipes happening.
How much experience do the players have.
How geared are the players.

How experienced is the player with a low threshold of wipes compared to one with a higher threshold.

You don't need gear or experience to succeed in LFR though.

[Deleted]

When the content is new, 1. Really should be 0 wipes due to how roflstomp LFR is, yet I hear horror stories of 10+ wipes in LFR on Archimonde because people simply won't stop afking.
And that's the problem, forcing together people who want to do it and get it done and those who want rewards for doing nothing. It's going to be toxic. There just is no way around it. And I personally hate that they're bringing tier and all that back in because I have PTSD about bindings in SoO. Sure, luckily first boss - but did every single difficulty every week (LFR when released others earlier naturally) and used coins, the shit just wouldn't drop for our guild or from coins. Eventually got the LFR version which I replaced with a pre-mythic heroic one when being almost done with the tier. It was pure torture in moaning to feel forced to go into LFR for it because it was just THAT GOOD.
Similar situations in the future scare me.

I've been really happy with the WoD model myself because there has been zero reasons for me to go to LFR - except the first week on valor upgrades, which you can argue I didn't NEED since we had already killed mythic Archi before the upgrades. But it's one more of those "not obligatory" things that you really have to do, because... yeah, it's still faster upgrades even if it's just for farm.
I absolutely HATED the version where tier and such was available since it felt more worthwhile to do for my alts... having to go to LFR and wipe 10 times on Shamans and Nazgrim berserk on LFR because people simply downright REFUSE to stop afking and people for some idiotic reason refuse to kick the afkers. What made it worse then was that you couldn't kick in combat back then so people just repulled, went afk, rinse and repeat until determination stacks and the shit dies.

Now the SOLUTION to all the nonsense with LFR?
Make LFR a scenario. You queue, you get your instant queue - your team mates? NPCs. You can queue with friends or alone.
If you actually do stuff it goes faster and if you're an afker it takes substantially longer. And no wipes. Still see it, still get your items. No toxic bullshit between anyone. Done, perfect.

And before anyone says something stupid like "but that will encourage the game being less social" - be realistic, LFR has absolutely no social interaction in a positive way. Anyone talking in LFR is guaranteed to be whining and if they aren't someone will whine in some way about what was said regardless of what was said. You won't make any friends in LFR. Those who actually want to have some human interaction can - and will - raid a bit higher where the team can be meaningful (rather than being full or elitists and afkers).

Very reasonable points imo, resonates a lot with me

- - - Updated - - -

If you take the matchmaking away from the computer and put it in the hands of people, then none of this matters. The whole reason we got to the point where LFR was needed was because people are naturally very exclusionary. A computer-cued system does not use any personal bias other than what the game decides is a reasonable minimum requirement... people are not so famous for setting reasonable minimum requirements.

Also, while most people enjoy gear improvement (in most games really), there are actually quite a few people that do not place a lot of value in improving as a player, so offering someone a chance to improve their ability is not really a key component to success. If anything, LFR has put an extra bullet point on this, because there is apparently an enormous amount of people who are actually happy doing the content just as it is. This is a case of where you THINK something is important to people, but (because you are "not seeing the big picture" as you said above) it obviously is not.

So you think that people do LFR for the rewards? I agree, lets try and remove the rewards im sure everyone would find the gameplay compelling. I've said it before and ill repeat it again, I want people to have the same experience of success that i had, and i think that facilitating this instead of telling people that they are winning is better for the game overall (BIGGER PICTURE)

Lets keep that "belittling" thing in mind for later.

Great, go on and attempt to form a narrative against me trying to keep the discussion even somewhat civil :>

Or I don't know, maybe they were there because it was free. Free is a big motivator.

Yeah, like the many other private servers out there that has terrible playerbases right? I suppose that if the game is free then everyone will play it instantly right? Has nothing to do with the gameplay being solid at all? No no, 150k people played a older terrible version of WoW with many bugs, completely unbalanced classes and gameplay because it was free, on a server that had no backup from Twitch or ads or anything.

Sweeeet... so you claim that I am belittling you (like you are some kind of victim here) and then suggest that I am an antisocial moron. That's classic. Yeah well, you acturally seem to be to me. You even go on to say that it's sad to expect to meet people when playing games online which i simply don't understand. If you want to be that antisocial then why not play an actual single-player game like Assasins Creed or smth.

And to be fair though you were belittling me (by saying that i was thinking in small terms, when infact i have done the exact opposite since the inception of posting in this thread) This combined with your complete lack of understanding of reasonable counterpoints to your logic. Just w0w. And ya you do seem antisocial as ill explain later.

Don't want the "wrong kind" of players in your game... the kind that like LFR or LFD or want to play solo or don't care to improve themselves... then don't play an MMO, because it is not all just the people that YOU want to play with out there in the virtual world.

Completely beside the point. The older versions of the game had actual content for casual players (that didn't include raiding necessarily) and i believe it was better off for it. I don't believe that giving people the option to queue for bosses and recieve free items in exchange for nothing is a rewarding experience. I want people to want to do actual raids, with actual raiders who communicate and form a coordinated group. I don't want people to be rewarded for doing nothing.

And I never said for one second that I was not social. I spent plenty of time over the years playing with friends, but they were mostly real life friends (including my real life wife). I totally understand that some people live pretty remotely or have physical mobility problems so maybe they rely on games to form friendships, but for the most part, I think depending on games to form human bonds is kind of sad (when the real world is swimming in potential friends).

Again, completely beside the point - your personal life should have no impact on the game. But anyway- because it's possible to meet people outside of the game we are to accept that the game has deviated so far from it's original release in terms of having a social aspect (due to LFR, Queue, Convenience Etc)
You think that it's healthy for people to sit in their garrisons and be anti social? What the fuck is the point then of doing anything then..

All that said, I still made a couple of in-game friends along the way... it was just never a goal, and definitely not one that I tried to force on others. And that is where a big part of the problem is, so many on these forums are trying to force friendship, and life does not generally work that way. And yes, trying to force friendship is a bit creepy.

ROFL, so because you (yes you personally) live a happy life with a wife and all of the friends (i guess) then it's somehow wrong of the game to facilitate the most basic human aspect of any MULTIPLAYER game - the social aspect?
I have friends i have met in the game, i have friends outside of the game, does that mean that the game can't facilitate human interaction? Absolutely not.
It's not like people want the game to be a fucking friend finder so stop conflating these things. All people want is a bit of human interaction. Call it friends, associates or whatever. I have often played with people whom i didn't particularly like in order to achieve shared success.
Demanding a slight bit of human interaction isn't creepy, complaining about having to interact with other players in an MMO however is extemely baffling to me.

Comparing things in game to welfare makes it hard to take you serious, but I suppose there is some truth to it. The same could be said for a lot of things though (raiding, questing, pvp)... you remove any one of them and things will explode. Of course that just speaks to how important LFR is now.

It's a completely valid comparison. I happen to live in one of the biggest Welfare countries in the world (Denmark) and i have seen similar patterns here. The more i think about it that comparison makes sense to me so take it as it is, even if you think that comparing human patterns between a video game and the real world isn't valid.

It is not all just people playing 2 hours a week that use LFR, but regardless, as a business you cater to what pays the bills. If the two hour a week people are putting that much money into the game, then that is who you try to keep happy... that is just business.

Yes, but the thing is that there is a difference between what people think they want, and what they acturally want. People cried out that they wanted to participate in raiding and Blizzard gave them LFR. The thing is that participating in raids is something you work towards over time. If Blizzard had made a forum post saying that they would never add a feature like LFR then a lot of players (not all obviously) would have worked towards improving. The game has to handle rewards correctly. There has to be a buildup. Look at the artifacts in legion, they look fucking awful? Why you ask? Simple - ZERO Buildup. The older legendaries though? (excluding cloak/ring) had a unique feel to them, because they were limited and very powerful. Everyone who did remembers when they completed these items. I would bet that most people wouldn't remember when they got the cloak (if it weren't because it was given to literally everone at the beginning of the patch)

So telling someone that they should "think about it in a bigger picture than your own convenience" is not belittling?

Nice.

Again you fail to realize my points about the overall landscape of the game, oh well.

EDIT: Seems to work agian.

[ComputerNerd]

So you don't see ANY problems with having LFR even in the longterm? Such as a dwindling raiding population (in general)? Also, do you honestly consider LFR raiding? A place with no mechanics, organisation and free rewards for simply pressing a button?

As i said earlier i could choose to not give a fuck about any of this, but i honestly see great damage done to the game by this feature alone. (And YES there are many things i would consider wrong with the game but LFR takes the cake for me)

LFR is raiding if normal is, and people aren't arguing that isn't
Stop with the hyperbole.
There are mechanics, the rewards aren't "free" - just it being below your arbitrary standards,

Blizzard stupidly listened to the elitist jerks and nerfed the gear rewards in LFR.
But that did little to nothing to pull people out of it, because it is less about what is drawing people into that format but what is preventing them from moving up to others.
What is making the other formats inaccessible or undesirable.
That is what people need to be asking, what is wrong with the traditional formats.
And that is a very simple question to answer, players.

[Deleted]

LFR is raiding if normal is, and people aren't arguing that isn't
Stop with the hyperbole.
There are mechanics, the rewards aren't "free" - just it being below your arbitrary standards,

No it isn't. Normal doesen't have a determination buff that stacks up and essentially rewards failure. Normal on the other hand has actual mechanics that can wipe your raid if you don't do them properly. Lets take a fight like Butcher since my memory serves on that particular fight. In LFR the damage butcher did would be around 15-20% (at most) to the players in the raid (for doing the fight correctly). Yet even in normal mode the boss would kill someone if people didn't line up correctly. The distinction im trying to describe here is that one difficulty is designed to be completed (no matter what) and the other is designed to test the player slightly. LFR is not supposed to test you, it is designed to reward you for being bad, and i think that this is a terrible idea.

Blizzard stupidly listened to the elitist jerks and nerfed the gear rewards in LFR.

So you think that you deserve gear that was often so good that it was mandatory for Mythic raiders like me (or Heroic in SoO) to try and obtain it to be competetive? You think you acturally deserve good rewards for doing absolutely nothing? I disagree entirely. You have to earn it first in my opinion.

But that did little to nothing to pull people out of it, because it is less about what is drawing people into that format but what is preventing them from moving up to others.

The only thing keeping people out of normals are the people themselves. People choose to do LFR because of it being convenient for them. Convenience kills the game.

What is making the other formats inaccessible or undesirable.
That is what people need to be asking, what is wrong with the traditional formats.

And that is a very simple question to answer, players.

Nope, it is the system that facilitates this type of behaviour that is to blame, not the players. Players are humans, and humans act according to human behaviour. If the game tells you that it is completely acceptable to be a lazy antisocial asshat then the odds of you behaving this way is greatly increased. Put rewards on top and it's even more likely. If the game however tells the players that in order to see the bosses the player needs to cooperate, have individual improvement etc. then the likelyhood of the player adapting to these requirements is obviously greatly increased.

[Wingspan]

I disagree. Being able to queue for stuff takes away from the epic feel (atleast for me)...

And that is fine. But having a queue system does not keep you from having that epic feel if you still want it. Simply go there... and then queue.

Or go there and don't queue, whatever, you can still just go there.

Based on the number of queuing systems in current games, I feel it is safe to say that most people do not have a real problem with it.

I don't like that WoW has become World of QueueCraft and the friends i have spoken to (mainly mythic raiders) felt the same way when i spoke to them about this.

So people who make a practice of organized raiding prefer organized raiding... this is hardly an epiphany.

It's quite simple acturally. There is a huge flood of people who have tremendous hate for people in my position, who are critical of things being too casual (like LFR) who want others to feel what we have felt. The sense of aspiration that is long gone from the game. When these people turn on you and call you an Elitist asshole for wanting to make the game better you acturally feel quite sad.

You mean make the game better "for you". The whole concept of multi-mode gaming is that it literally covers almost every possible skill level and therefore should make almost everyone happy. As a rule, the only ones that tend to be unhappy about it are the ones that have a hard time with others having something that they do not deserve (which says a lot about them).

I have been there, i have been a newbie (got to level 37 in Vanilla doing god knows what) and i fought my way to the top because the game teased me enough. I want others to have that experience, -it's that simple.

You assume that others want that experience (and some do) but many don't and that is the problem. We don't all play a game for same reasons... and DEFINITELY not with the same passion or motivation. SO many people are very happy running LFR, so why on earth would you want to take that from them?

It's not that i don't want these players in the game,...

Considering that you have recommended that some people should leave the game 3 or 4 (or more) times in this thread alone, this is either a blatant lie, or some AMAZING denial. I will let you decide which.

... i want as many people to play the game as possible. But these toxic opinions of people (who often didn't play the earlier versions of WoW) that slander you, call you a nostalgic moron etc for pointing out that the game has deviated very far from it's orignal form can really get to you.

If you want to avoid the toxic opinions, there is an easy fix here... simply quit trying to take stuff away from people... that is all it takes. If you hate LFR, then awesome, don't go there... don't promote it... don't even mention it in whispers... but don't crusade to have it taken from those who like it. This will end nearly all perceived persecution that you may be experiencing because honestly, most people don't care enough about what you may or may not have done in the game.

Also, "toxic opinions" are relative. To many, your opinions are the toxic ones... and that is also a valid stance to take.

Yes, techically LFR can be considered content, correct sir -bravo. Does it have any real meaning though?

It has as much real meaning as anything in a video game can have. Really, how much real meaning does ANY of this have?

The problem with LFR is that there is absolutely no correlation between doing good or bad- you are rewarded exactly the same, THIS is my problem with LFR.

Denial.

You have trouble with it having rewards... period. If it had no rewards at all, success or failure, you would not be here having an issue with the lack of rewards being the same (success or failure). Someone is getting something that you feel they do not deserve... and that is really the only problem here.

I don't think it's healthy to have a large population discouraged from "real raiding" because LFR is more convenient. I think that the current Normal modes makes LFR completely beside the point. Everyone can get into normals, its just a question about moving your ass.

Heh heh heh... lucky we have you here to tell us how to play. Yep, there is no way that can go wrong.

Seriously, even if they removed LFR, there would just be "get rid of normal mode" threads in a year or two, so it would all be for exactly nothing.

So you don't see ANY problems with having LFR even in the longterm? Such as a dwindling raiding population (in general)? Also, do you honestly consider LFR raiding? A place with no mechanics, organisation and free rewards for simply pressing a button?

What I would suspect that has a far worse affect on the raiding population is your attitude towards what others seem to enjoy doing. It is unhealthy to have that much fear of people having fun without you. And that can't be good for the game.

As i said earlier i could choose to not give a fuck about any of this, but i honestly see great damage done to the game by this feature alone. (And YES there are many things i would consider wrong with the game but LFR takes the cake for me)

You are trying to find a scapegoat for your changing world and LFR is easy.

You have no evidence (period) that LFR is causing any kind of damage on any scale that matters. Blizzard CAN gather this kind of information, and you can guarantee they have. If they had uncovered ANYTHING that supports your belief, then LFR would have been dumped long ago. They have done their best to discourage it, but by this point they realize it is not the cancer that some would have us believe... hence, it is not going anywhere (at least not anytime soon).

[Daffan]

You should never be able to wipe on LFR, there should be an NPC army that helps you on every fight. So after 20 of the afk bots die, the 5 people left still have a raid to help them!

[Wingspan]

It's a completely valid comparison. I happen to live in one of the biggest Welfare countries in the world (Denmark) and i have seen similar patterns here. The more i think about it that comparison makes sense to me so take it as it is, even if you think that comparing human patterns between a video game and the real world isn't valid.

This is awesome, watch...

Yeah, like the many other private servers out there that has terrible playerbases right? I suppose that if the game is free then everyone will play it instantly right? Has nothing to do with the gameplay being solid at all? No no, 150k people played a older terrible version of WoW with many bugs, completely unbalanced classes and gameplay because it was free, on a server that had no backup from Twitch or ads or anything.

You complain about welfare in games and then justify playing on a free server... it would be hard to write a better joke than that.

So you think that people do LFR for the rewards? I agree, lets try and remove the rewards im sure everyone would find the gameplay compelling.

Of course many, if not most, people do LFR for the rewards. The same can be said for nearly anything in the game though, so it is hardly a revelation.

I've said it before and ill repeat it again, I want people to have the same experience of success that i had, and i think that facilitating this instead of telling people that they are winning is better for the game overall (BIGGER PICTURE)

The bigger picture here is that people do not necessarily want to have your experience. It may also come as surprising, but many people do not have a desire to be you (crazy, I know).

Completely beside the point. The older versions of the game had actual content for casual players (that didn't include raiding necessarily) and i believe it was better off for it. I don't believe that giving people the option to queue for bosses and recieve free items in exchange for nothing is a rewarding experience. I want people to want to do actual raids, with actual raiders who communicate and form a coordinated group. I don't want people to be rewarded for doing nothing.

Exactly... you want them to do what YOU want and are not particularly concerned with what THEY want. It is very unhealthy.

You think that it's healthy for people to sit in their garrisons and be anti social? What the fuck is the point then of doing anything then..

If it makes them happy, then who cares what they do?

Also, you are generally abusing the term "anti-social". You should look it up.

ROFL, so because you (yes you personally) live a happy life with a wife and all of the friends (i guess) then it's somehow wrong of the game to facilitate the most basic human aspect of any MULTIPLAYER game - the social aspect?

I never said that in any way. Also, to "facilitate" and to "force" are entirely different things. The game does MANY things to facilitate multi-player activity (and that is good). The problem comes when people try to force multi-player on people who do not want it... that is the part that gets a little creepy.

Demanding a slight bit of human interaction isn't creepy, complaining about having to interact with other players in an MMO however is extemely baffling to me.

So you should be fine with LFR then, because that would be the very definition of a "slight bit of human interaction".

Yes, but the thing is that there is a difference between what people think they want, and what they acturally want. People cried out that they wanted to participate in raiding and Blizzard gave them LFR. The thing is that participating in raids is something you work towards over time. If Blizzard had made a forum post saying that they would never add a feature like LFR then a lot of players (not all obviously) would have worked towards improving. The game has to handle rewards correctly. There has to be a buildup. Look at the artifacts in legion, they look fucking awful? Why you ask? Simple - ZERO Buildup. The older legendaries though? (excluding cloak/ring) had a unique feel to them, because they were limited and very powerful. Everyone who did remembers when they completed these items. I would bet that most people wouldn't remember when they got the cloak (if it weren't because it was given to literally everone at the beginning of the patch)

Tell me, would you be fine if they removed all gear from LFR (but kept it in like a Wrathgate story mode) then just put all the exact same LFR gear in as drops from weekly quests (with all the same lockouts and drop rates that LFR would have had)? Would that make you happy? The sanctity of raiding should be completely preserved that way, so would that work for you?

[Deleted]

And that is fine. But having a queue system does not keep you from having that epic feel if you still want it. Simply go there... and then queue.

Or go there and don't queue, whatever, you can still just go there.

Based on the number of queuing systems in current games, I feel it is safe to say that most people do not have a real problem with it.

I love when people have simplistic answers for questions like this. Think about this for a moment, your propostion is ridiculous. xD

So people who make a practice of organized raiding prefer organized raiding... this is hardly an epiphany.

What kind of answer to a perfectly reasonable statement is this?

You mean make the game better "for you". The whole concept of multi-mode gaming is that it literally covers almost every possible skill level and therefore should make almost everyone happy. As a rule, the only ones that tend to be unhappy about it are the ones that have a hard time with others having something that they do not deserve (which says a lot about them).

I hate to do this but you are completely off the mark again. I want the game to be great again, at the moment with the "diversity" it isn't. The 5 million subs that left during this expansion alone seem to agree that the game isn't good atm.

You assume that others want that experience (and some do) but many don't and that is the problem. We don't all play a game for same reasons... and DEFINITELY not with the same passion or motivation. SO many people are very happy running LFR, so why on earth would you want to take that from them?

I've explained this so many times. I think it's better for the greater good of the game. I don't think that awarding people free items for doing nothing is a good concept. I don't think that facilitating antisocial behaviour in an MMO is a good concept. Normal is here and could potentially make LFR completely obsolete. You dont need a special set of skills to do Normal.

Considering that you have recommended that some people should leave the game 3 or 4 (or more) times in this thread alone, this is either a blatant lie, or some AMAZING denial. I will let you decide which.

I've answered this question before but ill gladly answer it again. I don't want people to leave the game. I want the game to be as successful as it could be. But seeing hearing bullshit from people who call you out for being Elitist for pointing out glaring problems with the current game in attempts to improve it can annoy you quite a bit. I am not trying to bash anybody, or attempting to steal someones favourite game mode. But i don't think that the game facilitates the greatness it once did. I've climbed the ladder, been the worst player and through trial and error i improved and felt rewarded. THIS is what i want others to feel. LFR however prevents to many from achieving this and i find it sad.

If you want to avoid the toxic opinions, there is an easy fix here... simply quit trying to take stuff away from people... that is all it takes. If you hate LFR, then awesome, don't go there... don't promote it... don't even mention it in whispers... but don't crusade to have it taken from those who like it. This will end nearly all perceived persecution that you may be experiencing because honestly, most people don't care enough about what you may or may not have done in the game.

Again, im not trying to take anything away from anybody. I am trying to help out community grow by purging the game from the most absurd feature of all time. I have made it so fucking clear at this point, that im not on a witchhunt or trying to bash people doing LFR.
But i reallllllllly don't think that LFR was a good addition to the game, and i feel that it should (and could) be replaced in favor of something far better (for everyones sake)

Also, "toxic opinions" are relative. To many, your opinions are the toxic ones... and that is also a valid stance to take.

Not really. Even if my opinions come off as incredibly blunt (i intend for them to) i always try to offer an alternative. It would be incredibly easy to bash the entire LFR community for no reason, just as it would be with any region of players in the game but that was never my goal (and i hope you realize this)
I am trying to be constructive here. I am trying to have a civil discussion and to raise awareness around an issue i see hurting the game, an issue i think needs mending. See the difference between being "critical" and "toxic"?

It has as much real meaning as anything in a video game can have. Really, how much real meaning does ANY of this have?

You tell me? I am very passionate about my favourite game returning to it's former glory, i have thought a lot about what made the game great, and im trying to share my findings in hopes of finding common ground. Thats just my view though. I am incredibly passionate about the game, and i have seen the downfall mainly since Cataclysm (Really WotlK, if we are being honest) and it frustrates me that the game is how it is today.

People are fully welcome to disagree with me, as many people already have, and as i expected many people to do. What i don't respect is when people purposefully omit certain details i have said because of being inable to form reasonable counter-arguements to points i would consider valid.
And the even worse thing that sometimes happen is when people try to label you as an "Elitist" or w/e, simply for disagreeing with them.

Denial.

You have trouble with it having rewards... period. If it had no rewards at all, success or failure, you would not be here having an issue with the lack of rewards being the same (success or failure). Someone is getting something that you feel they do not deserve... and that is really the only problem here.

Ridiculous. I don't think that people should be rewarded for doing nothing. Notice btw, that i don't say that only Mythic raiders should get loot, or mythic / heroic raiders. I couldn't give two fucks about the blue generic trash gear that drops in LFR, but what i do however care about is how people are rewarded. I don't believe that people should be able to queue for something, sit AFK and still get a reward.
To prove my point; Take normal for instance, normal would still be a complete fcking faceroll for a player like myself (not trying to brag so don't conflate my points) but i don't feel the need to bash people doing normal and do you know why? The people doing normal are ACTURALLY RAIDING. Sure the difficulty of the raid is entry-level, but it acturally requires people to atleast do something, or contribute in some way in order for them to be rewarded. LFR on the other hand, guarentees success - This is what i dislike.
Oh and by the way, fuck you for purposely omitting my points (AGAIN) in an attempt to win the debate. I am not a selfish cunt, but based on the way you go about arguing and reading my points it wouldn't surprise me if you are projecting at the moment.

Heh heh heh... lucky we have you here to tell us how to play. Yep, there is no way that can go wrong.

What does that even mean? I am trying to improve the game.

Seriously, even if they removed LFR, there would just be "get rid of normal mode" threads in a year or two, so it would all be for exactly nothing.

Nope and heres why. Normal raids are about the same difficulty as Naxxramas 10 was in WotlK, back then barely anybody complained, the only people complaining was the better guilds who cleared Naxxramas very quickly and had little to do because of it (a very reasonable complaint btw). The WotlK content was easy and very doable but it was still raiding. People are complainting about LFR because of it's structure. If you still fail to see this then what the fuck is the point dude.[/QUOTE]

What I would suspect that has a far worse affect on the raiding population is your attitude towards what others seem to enjoy doing. It is unhealthy to have that much fear of people having fun without you. And that can't be good for the game.

My attitude? I don't judge LFR raiders, i want them to have a better game. I want all of us to have a better game. I don't want the game to cater to the player who plays 2 hours a week. I want it to have actural content for everyone to do, not just people who raid.

You are trying to find a scapegoat for your changing world and LFR is easy.

You have no evidence (period) that LFR is causing any kind of damage on any scale that matters. Blizzard CAN gather this kind of information, and you can guarantee they have. If they had uncovered ANYTHING that supports your belief, then LFR would have been dumped long ago. They have done their best to discourage it, but by this point they realize it is not the cancer that some would have us believe... hence, it is not going anywhere (at least not anytime soon).[/QUOTE]

What scapegoat? Do you not read my posts? It's about the 5th time that i have mentioned that LFR ISNT THE ONLY PROBLEM, yet i percieve it as the greatest. I've even mentioned several things besides LFR that i would like to see changed. Once again i really get the feeling that you are projecting. It really feels like you don't believe that a person could have selfless motives, as in, acturally wanting the game to change for the better (for everyone)

I think ill end it here. I don't really see what arguing with you further will do. To me it honestly feels like you are either intentionally omitting key points for the purpose of forming a narrative since your own arguments don't hold up to scrutiny, which i find really fcking lame. Or you are just a very sad person trying to troll and waste my time. Which one it is doesen't really matter.

Learn to argue like an adult. You say you are married etc, atleast act like it.

[Wingspan]

I hate to do this but you are completely off the mark again. I want the game to be great again, at the moment with the "diversity" it isn't. The 5 million subs that left during this expansion alone seem to agree that the game isn't good atm.

We don't even really know the root cause of this. It is entirely possible that the way they handled flight in WoD had more impact than LFR. Considering how long LFR has been in the game, it might even be likely.

We just don't know... even Blizz probably does not know. What they DO know is that a decent number of people seem to enjoy LFR, which is enough reason to keep it.

I've explained this so many times. I think it's better for the greater good of the game. I don't think that awarding people free items for doing nothing is a good concept. I don't think that facilitating antisocial behaviour in an MMO is a good concept. Normal is here and could potentially make LFR completely obsolete. You dont need a special set of skills to do Normal.

Fortunately, developers seem to think that you are wrong. Seriously, Blizzard tried to scoot people into organized raiding with WOD, but it obviously did not work as well as they hoped. They seem to have accepted that LFR is a place that some people like to be.

I've answered this question before but ill gladly answer it again. I don't want people to leave the game.

Would you like me to just quote your posts for you? You said it multiple times.

I want the game to be as successful as it could be. But seeing hearing bullshit from people who call you out for being Elitist for pointing out glaring problems with the current game in attempts to improve it can annoy you quite a bit. I am not trying to bash anybody, or attempting to steal someones favourite game mode. But i don't think that the game facilitates the greatness it once did. I've climbed the ladder, been the worst player and through trial and error i improved and felt rewarded. THIS is what i want others to feel. LFR however prevents to many from achieving this and i find it sad.

I am honestly glad you had this experience, but not everyone wants that experience. And it is a bit oppressive to try and force this experience on others.

Not really. Even if my opinions come off as incredibly blunt (i intend for them to) i always try to offer an alternative. It would be incredibly easy to bash the entire LFR community for no reason, just as it would be with any region of players in the game but that was never my goal (and i hope you realize this)
I am trying to be constructive here. I am trying to have a civil discussion and to raise awareness around an issue i see hurting the game, an issue i think needs mending. See the difference between being "critical" and "toxic"?

I could go back and quote the curses, "moron", and "lazy" accusations, but at this point I am kind of tired. It was definitely toxic in spots.

People are fully welcome to disagree with me, as many people already have, and as i expected many people to do. What i don't respect is when people purposefully omit certain details i have said because of being inable to form reasonable counter-arguements to points i would consider valid.
And the even worse thing that sometimes happen is when people try to label you as an "Elitist" or w/e, simply for disagreeing with them.

Good thing I am not one for labels... you however have used several in this thread.

Oh and by the way, fuck you for purposely omitting my points (AGAIN) in an attempt to win the debate. I am not a selfish cunt, but based on the way you go about arguing and reading my points it wouldn't surprise me if you are projecting at the moment.

Nope... nothing toxic about you. How could I have been so wrong?

[Vineri]

[People are] trying to find a scapegoat for [a] changing world and LFR is easy.

That sums up what you were saying. Thank you.

As to other points, if you think LFR does not cause damage, then you are not fully in tune with reality. It is the very ill-will Blizzard has been the target of for years now. Cross-anything destroys communities, be it LFD, LFR, CRZ. I could not care less what data Blizzard has obtained. It's what players feel that counts.

And yes, LFR is easy, at least we can agree on that.

[ComputerNerd]

No it isn't. Normal doesen't have a determination buff that stacks up and essentially rewards failure. Normal on the other hand has actual mechanics that can wipe your raid if you don't do them properly. Lets take a fight like Butcher since my memory serves on that particular fight. In LFR the damage butcher did would be around 15-20% (at most) to the players in the raid (for doing the fight correctly). Yet even in normal mode the boss would kill someone if people didn't line up correctly. The distinction im trying to describe here is that one difficulty is designed to be completed (no matter what) and the other is designed to test the player slightly. LFR is not supposed to test you, it is designed to reward you for being bad, and i think that this is a terrible idea.



So you think that you deserve gear that was often so good that it was mandatory for Mythic raiders like me (or Heroic in SoO) to try and obtain it to be competetive? You think you acturally deserve good rewards for doing absolutely nothing? I disagree entirely. You have to earn it first in my opinion.

The only thing keeping people out of normals are the people themselves. People choose to do LFR because of it being convenient for them. Convenience kills the game.




Nope, it is the system that facilitates this type of behaviour that is to blame, not the players. Players are humans, and humans act according to human behaviour. If the game tells you that it is completely acceptable to be a lazy antisocial asshat then the odds of you behaving this way is greatly increased. Put rewards on top and it's even more likely. If the game however tells the players that in order to see the bosses the player needs to cooperate, have individual improvement etc. then the likelyhood of the player adapting to these requirements is obviously greatly increased.

Arbitrary excuses.

LFR is raiding, whether you like it or not.
People do wipe in LFR when they fail at mechanics, so that argument is moot.
Hence determination, which if it could not be failed would not need to exist.
So that is in fact you contradicting yourself.

And what good did nerfing the gear actually do to stop mythic raiders using it if it provided ANY benefit to them ?
NOTHING.
So stop using the gear argument, as that has been proven to be utterly wrong.
Given the difficulty of normal compared to mythic, does that "deserve" tier by your argument ?
No, but it has it.
And people aren't arguing for that to change.
Because it is a petty and immature bias.

And how are inflated requirements not keeping people out.
How is the belief that time-commitment problems are entirely our own creation not keeping people out.
I have parents with physical mobility issues, meaning that I am prone to interruption during sociable raiding hours.
Is that something I am imagining or fabricating ?
No.
Those difficulties are not something sudden, but happened many years ago.
The community I was a part of used to be far more understanding, for more willing to think about than what was just convenient to them.
Now anyone who might require you to inconvenience yourself is just discarded like trash.

[Wingspan]

That sums up what you were saying. Thank you.

As to other points, if you think LFR does not cause damage, then you are not fully in tune with reality. It is the very ill-will Blizzard has been the target of for years now. Cross-anything destroys communities, be it LFD, LFR, CRZ. I could not care less what data Blizzard has obtained. It's what players feel that counts.

And yes, LFR is easy, at least we can agree on that.

I would never go far as to say that it causes no damage of any kind. WoW is a delicate, multi-layered game... and any system will inevitably affect other systems to some degree (even if it just labor resources).

But I will note that it has never been proven to cause any amount of serious damage to the game. There is a lot of room for personal philosophy here (even for developers), but Blizzard does have access to a lot of actual hard data on this topic. And if any of that data was even remotely suggesting that LFR was hurting the game on a level that mattered, they would have killed it long ago.

Blizzard can be stupid concerning gaming philosophy sometimes, but they do not tend to ignore actual data.