Does exclusivity make a better game? Gating content

[Venziir]

Not in 2016. In 2006, maybe, or at least, that's how the market at least worked.

[Perkunas]

Man, it's impossible for something to be epic in a game if everyone has it. That's fact.
Do you see anyone going crazy after defeating Archimonde on LFR? No, they probably make a pokerface and say "fuck it didn't drop an epic, godamit".

There are a lot of acceptable ways to making gated content like...making it a little bit easy but with some unforgiving mechanics.
When i did Naxxramas in WotlK i felt like a king and i thought i was doing something amazing (i had no idea it was easy mode)

How do you make something epic while everyone have access to it? That's impossible.

I'm confused about the access thing. The only thing preventing somebody from clearing Sunwell was that person's own dedication and skill level. I rerolled once, swapped servers twice just so I could find a guild that had my preferred raiding times and dedication level. I have no sympathy for people who sit on shitty dead realms bitching about no content when all they've done is semi-afk'd through LFR. Hell, these people would have content if they were progressing through normal or heroic, but they already "killed the last boss" in LFR so they complain. Who was bitching in TBC about lack of content? NOBODY! You know why? Terribles were still trying to progress through tier 4/5 all the way to the end of the expansion. It kept them playing they were too busy raiding to bitch about lack of content.

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Not in 2016. In 2006, maybe, or at least, that's how the market at least worked.

The everybody gets a trophy attitude that the younger millennials have is beyond annoying especially when applied in this genre.

[Deleted]

I'm confused about the access thing. The only thing preventing somebody from clearing Sunwell was that person's own dedication and skill level. I rerolled once, swapped servers twice just so I could find a guild that had my preferred raiding times and dedication level. I have no sympathy for people who sit on shitty dead realms bitching about no content when all they've done is semi-afk'd through LFR. Hell, these people would have content if they were progressing through normal or heroic, but they already "killed the last boss" in LFR so they complain. Who was bitching in TBC about lack of content? NOBODY! You know why? Terribles were still trying to progress through tier 4/5 all the way to the end of the expansion. It kept them playing they were too busy raiding to bitch about lack of content.

At this point i'm saying normal raids are gated content because they are not queueable xD lol

But you are right, the majority of people you cry for more content and spend half the day on forums spaming the words "content drought" are the ones who never stepped in a normal raid and have no idea what "progression" is.

[Eurhetemec]

You get a single launch in this genre. If you fuck up your launch and scare off your potential community before they are established IT'S OVER. There's no coming back from that UNLESS you have a godly IP and are willing to shutter your game and fix EVERYTHING like Final Fantasy did. Wildstar did not have that ability nor the foresight so they've gradually fixed things, but it is too late even if the raids are AMAZING and they are damn good. There's no chance people are going to go back once they have been burned.

I don't really buy that, Perkunas.

If your product is good enough, you can have a completely fucked release, and people will keep coming back until it's fixed. Whereas if your product isn't stellar, you can have an utterly flawless release, and yet people may well not stick around.

The prime example of the former is WoW. I played from beta, bought WoW at target 8am day 1, because Walmart had sold all 4 (lol!) copies it had for the midnight release - all to the same frat boy too! (was living in the US at the time). So I remember very clearly WoW's release. It was a shitshow. The servers crashed every few hours. Not went down properly. Crashed. Servers frequently got out of sync, so chat would work, but nothing else. For hours at a time. You couldn't log out, you couldn't log in. But the odd 45 minutes (and that was about how long it was) here and there, where it all worked? Holy shit. Something special. Something worth trying for. Eventually I got bored of WoW and went back to other MMOs, but they weren't the same - even if some bits were massively superior (DAoC's RvR is still better mass PvP than absolutely anything WoW has ever attempted - like, still, to this day).

Another example of a different approach is FFXIV, which fucked it's release royally on a variety of levels. They shut down, re-tooled and re-released, and the game is pretty massive and still sub-based. So people came back, because it had things they wanted. Even though they got burned HARD. Probably one of the hardest burns in MMO history.

Whereas Rift and SWTOR both had very smooth launches, and whilst both had respectable gameplay, unique merits, good graphics, and so on, people drifted away - pretty fast too. A smooth launch isn't everything. Having something special, something people want, is more important, and people didn't, and don't want what WildStar had.

But in the end this is a matter of opinion, so I respect yours on the matter, even if I disagree.

Back on main topic, I think Blizzard have failed to make the case for Mythic-only dungeons so far. That is the first bit of genuinely "obnoxious and unnecessary gating" I've come across since... what... maybe Classic even? They had a great opportunity to explain why, and completely failed to do so. They say there's a blog post coming up about it, but given the person saying that couldn't give even a single reason why Mythic-only dungeons were "needed" or should exist, only reasons why they might not be quite as horrid as expected (which was not the concern being raised, even if they successfully derailed the discussion by talking about it...).

About the only reason I can come up with was Blizzard wanted complex mechanics for the Mythic dungeons, and couldn't bothered to add more simple mechanics for the Normal/Heroic versions. That's a shit, lazy reason, really. I mean, a casual player can see every raid in the game (eventually - but in the right expansion), but not every DUNGEON? lol wtf? There's just no way they're that special.

So it strikes me as a really shitty/shoddy kind of gating. Not genuine, interesting exclusivity, but "Oh can't be bothered to make it accessible..." laziness. The kind that, were I even a little more casual, might have me considering whether Blizzard really deserved my sub money.

It doesn't help that they've let a faux-elitist (i.e. maximum lazy, minimum risk) culture evolve in the current Mythic dungeons, where people just want people who wildly overgear them, and exclude anyone who doesn't (yeah, "form your own groups" - I will, but sometimes I don't want to lead a group, and a lot of people don't have the personality for it - forcing them to is bad for everyone because you get a lot of uptight or panicky people leading groups, who don't want to be), and whilst the new expansion will challenge that for a while, they're likely to fall back into those habits, or worse ones. GW2 has the precise same issue with a similar system.

Still, it'd be bloody easy to fix the problem. If they feel the dungeon is too long for Norm/Heroic, they can just chop it up - not like they've not done that before.

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At this point i'm saying normal raids are gated content because they are not queueable xD lol

But you are right, the majority of people you cry for more content and spend half the day on forums spaming the words "content drought" are the ones who never stepped in a normal raid and have no idea what "progression" is.

No, they aren't.

The casual crowd don't moan about "content droughts", because they just leave the game. The content drought crowd are, and always have been the kind of people who play 24/7, grind every rep, play every dungeon until they have every bit of loot and so, and then after having played WoW every waking hour for a month (or every one they can spare), are shocked and appalled that there isn't tons more content for them to do. They often are pretty serious raiders, too.

[Sansnom]

It's impossible for something to be epic in a game if everyone has it. That's fact.

Nope. That is an opinion. It is not a fact. It may be epic for you if something is exclusive. That is only a fact for a people with narcissistic tendency.

It does not imply it is the same for everyone. The WoTLK pre launch zombie was considered to rather epic. And that is open to everyone, even for the PvE servers.

How do you make something epic while everyone have access to it? It's impossible.

See, you keep saying you do not care about other players yet you still repeat this thing about everyone having the same thing.

I wonder if you see other things in life in this way.

[Perkunas]

I don't really buy that, Perkunas.

If your product is good enough, you can have a completely fucked release, and people will keep coming back until it's fixed. Whereas if your product isn't stellar, you can have an utterly flawless release, and yet people may well not stick around.

The only example of this is Warcraft and that's because at the time within the genre even established games were buggy nightmares. I quote Thott's post when Afterlife quit EQ for WoW about how bugged EQ was versus Warcraft in beta at the time. I've quoted it so many times...

The prime example of the former is WoW. I played from beta, bought WoW at target 8am day 1, because Walmart had sold all 4 (lol!) copies it had for the midnight release - all to the same frat boy too! (was living in the US at the time). So I remember very clearly WoW's release. It was a shitshow. The servers crashed every few hours. Not went down properly. Crashed. Servers frequently got out of sync, so chat would work, but nothing else. For hours at a time. You couldn't log out, you couldn't log in. But the odd 45 minutes (and that was about how long it was) here and there, where it all worked? Holy shit. Something special. Something worth trying for. Eventually I got bored of WoW and went back to other MMOs, but they weren't the same - even if some bits were massively superior (DAoC's RvR is still better mass PvP than absolutely anything WoW has ever attempted - like, still, to this day).

Warcraft is a zeitgeist. It's the exception that only proves the rules if you want an idea. Yes, Warcraft was buggy and the servers were unstable but the was the MO of the day and age for the genre. You could get away with it back then if your product was superior and frankly the game was. The combat was far more fluid, the movement, the world was beautiful to behold, and let us not forget about the IP. Warcraft was a highly established IP with millions of rabid fans albeit from a different genre. Also, Blizzard... Blizzard can make a half-assed game and people would buy the shit out of it see Diablo 3 based on previous success alone.

I was playing Earth and Beyond and EQ while Warcraft was in beta and even in beta the game was better than either of those two and less buggy in most instances.

Another example of a different approach is FFXIV, which fucked it's release royally on a variety of levels. They shut down, re-tooled and re-released, and the game is pretty massive and still sub-based. So people came back, because it had things they wanted. Even though they got burned HARD. Probably one of the hardest burns in MMO history.

Once again, the IP for this game coupled with devs that take an active interest in what the community wants. I'd venture that if this game were both not on consoles and FF it would not be doing as well as it currently is. I'd advocate Star Wars to take this route and they'd likely have a similar success, but EA is pretty much the great Satan and Bioware has no fucking clue what to do with an MMO. I mean they put Gabe "I don't know shit about a PVE MMO" Amatangelo in charge of combat for a bit and he's clueless.

Whereas Rift and SWTOR both had very smooth launches, and whilst both had respectable gameplay, unique merits, good graphics, and so on, people drifted away - pretty fast too. A smooth launch isn't everything. Having something special, something people want, is more important, and people didn't, and don't want what WildStar had.

I played Rift at launch and I think it had more to do with it being a WoW clone at a point where Warcraft was still doing relatively solid **corrected. Half my guild bought it but IIRC it was just generic another basic WoW clone without any real spirit behind it in a world we didn't care about. Star Wars was garbage from the start and, sadly, I knew it in beta yet I still picked it up because I was playing with Darth Hater and frankly the idea of having wasted like three years writing about and doing other work on a game that was going to flop was something I didn't want to think about. Star Wars had all the easy content any bad player could want but the combat had a massive delay, the classes weren't balanced between the factions, Bioware couldn't design a decent encounter if their lives depended on it, and they actually copied spells, abilities, cooldowns, rotations, word for word from Warcraft. I wont even get into the lack of modern-day MMO features as the game was basically an EQ clone with better graphics and a Star Wars skin (feature-wise not grind/difficulty).

But in the end this is a matter of opinion, so I respect yours on the matter, even if I disagree.

IF you gave Carbine an IP people gave a shit about, ample time to address bugs instead of forcing a game that was probably 6 months away from what I would assume a relatively playable launch things could have been better. The combat is amazing absolutely fulfilling even leveling currently, but the damage is done. "Raids being hard" didn't harpoon this game. Difficulty does not automatically determine how the game will turn out. EVE is soul-crushing to new players but it's a thriving game for what it is and it's only grown over the years. Where as a game like Star Wars is the easiest game you can imagine and the only thing keeping it afloat are the Cartel Market Whales.


I'll get back to the other points later as I'm currently at work

[Deleted]

No, they aren't.

The casual crowd don't moan about "content droughts", because they just leave the game. The content drought crowd are, and always have been the kind of people who play 24/7, grind every rep, play every dungeon until they have every bit of loot and so, and then after having played WoW every waking hour for a month (or every one they can spare), are shocked and appalled that there isn't tons more content for them to do. They often are pretty serious raiders, too.

Only 10% of the community complain about content droughts? I don't think so...more like 90%.

Nope. That is an opinion. It is not a fact. It may be epic for you if something is exclusive. That is only a fact for a people with narcissistic tendency.

It does not imply it is the same for everyone. The WoTLK pre launch zombie was considered to rather epic. And that is open to everyone, even for the PvE servers.
.

But that's not raiding, that's an event for everyone to experience. In raiding it's suposed to be a progression and a strugle to go forward.
We are suposed to wipe and try again harder to acomplish something and avoid unforgiving mechanics.
It's an epic experience like every other game where you are suposed to die if you play it wrong.

Making people believe they are raiding in a make believe version of it will only confuse the uninformed players.
They probably think they are raiders! They trully do.

[dakalro]

Only 10% of the community complain about content droughts? I don't think so...more like 90%.

It's probably only around 1% of people that ever complain. Maybe even less.

[Eurhetemec]

Only 10% of the community complain about content droughts? I don't think so...more like 90%.

You think the whole community is on forums and twitter and stuff talking about WoW?

Welp, that explains your confusion. No. Only a tiny percentage of WoW players EVER post on the forums except about tech issues or the like, and an even smaller percentage tweet about it. And they're mostly the more hardcore players. It is absolutely not a representative sample. I mean, jesus, I was in the most progressed guild on my server in classic and TBC, and I remember talking about the forums, and guess what? Most people didn't even read them, let alone post on them. That hasn't changed - forums are not for most players.

[stomination]

No it of course makes a worse game. The more content people can't see without dedicating more TIME than they have is not good.
But the difference that isn't being considered here is content like the game has now where everyone CAN see it, they just choose not to because they are casuals.

TBC and Classic gating made it impossible because the amount of time everything took in the game was unsustainable.
But now, you can get right to the challenging part without the 10 minutes of run backs and summoning 40 people and passing out 6k stacks of water etc.

The game is almost there to the right balance, we just need to move past LFR and MAYBE queueable dungeons, but I'm not convinced at that as long as Mythic+ takes off as it should.

Anyway, then the gate would be proper. Enough initial commitment to see "Normal" raids (which can be as difficult as LFR if needed, but still have the normal societal and progression orientation.) Then more would be spurred to over come the exclusivity barrier on their own.

I know different Genre but you have to but money or a lot of time in League in order to get all characters. Its like playing the game handicapped without most of the champs.

[Deleted]

You think the whole community is on forums and twitter and stuff talking about WoW?

Welp, that explains your confusion. No. Only a tiny percentage of WoW players EVER post on the forums except about tech issues or the like, and an even smaller percentage tweet about it. And they're mostly the more hardcore players. It is absolutely not a representative sample. I mean, jesus, I was in the most progressed guild on my server in classic and TBC, and I remember talking about the forums, and guess what? Most people didn't even read them, let alone post on them. That hasn't changed - forums are not for most players.

Yeah but we have everything on forums. I don't believe we are all elitists here. Specially on official forums lol, it's a clown fiesta over there.
I'm a VERY casual player who never stepped inside a raid of WoD and i despise LFR.

[Sansnom]

But that's not raiding, that's an event for everyone to experience. In raiding it's suposed to be a progression and a strugle to go forward.
It's suposed to wipe and try again harder to acomplish something and avoid unforgiving mechanics.

Please stay with the subject rather than deflecting it with another argument on what constitute to raiding.

It's an epic experience like every other game where you are suposed to die if you play it wrong.

So now "epic" experience is due to struggle and deaths along the way. Previously you said it was due to "exclusivity" of it.

Making people believe they are raiding in a make believe version of it will only confuse the uninformed players.

In care you are not aware, you are playing a video game. In a make believe world with make believe heroes. Killing make believe dragons and make believe fairy tale creatures.

They probably think they are raiders! They trully do.

And why do you care? Why are players like you think it is your duty to dictate how "uninformed" players should feel or play the game? What makes you think they are "uninformed" ? Because they play differently to you?

Do you pay their subscription? No? Then why is "your" way the "proper" way? When was that decided?

Sure, experience players should be there to help newer players in the game. When was the last time that happened? I have never seen it except in guilds. In PUGs? Never. People are removed and are called all manner of names.

[Xires]

No it of course makes a worse game. The more content people can't see without dedicating more TIME than they have is not good.
But the difference that isn't being considered here is content like the game has now where everyone CAN see it, they just choose not to because they are casuals.

TBC and Classic gating made it impossible because the amount of time everything took in the game was unsustainable.
But now, you can get right to the challenging part without the 10 minutes of run backs and summoning 40 people and passing out 6k stacks of water etc.

The game is almost there to the right balance, we just need to move past LFR and MAYBE queueable dungeons, but I'm not convinced at that as long as Mythic+ takes off as it should.

Anyway, then the gate would be proper. Enough initial commitment to see "Normal" raids (which can be as difficult as LFR if needed, but still have the normal societal and progression orientation.) Then more would be spurred to over come the exclusivity barrier on their own.

Harder content does not equal "more time". Raid schedules are raid schedules and they don't change just because you wanna go to a higher difficulty. If you were gonna log in to solo some attunement that just means instead of logging in and sitting in a city- you had to go out and get a few things done some of which required a group and it is GREAT that you have a guild because you can easily do that. It gives you a GOAL to work towards. Like for example I believe you SHOULD have to kill the last boss in a previous raid in order to go to the next. Kill the last boss on heroic and you can go to the next raid and do up to heroic. Kill the last boss on mythic and you can do the next tier on mythic as well.

This helps encourage people to "git good". Also with the constant length of the final tier you will ALWAYS have plenty of time. WoD has been done since the beginning of 2016 for my guild on mythic- we have been doing nothing but farming and gearing up alts and bringing in guildy's for a chance to see the end-game content and get achieves. Pleeeeenty of time to see ALL content. Without having to play a million billion hours which is a completely outdated and debunked theory on the part of the casuals.

[Deleted]

And why do you care? Why are players like you think it is your duty to dictate how "uninformed" players should feel or play the game? What makes you think they are "uninformed" ? Because they play differently to you?

Do you pay their subscription? No? Then why is "your" way the "proper" way? When was that decided?

Sure, experience players should be there to help newer players in the game. When was the last time that happened? I have never seen it except in guilds. In PUGs? Never. People are removed and are called all manner of names.

It's only my opinion that is proper game design to make exclusive content a little bit harder, making it a more epic experience.
By making it available in LFR it's destroying the basic rules of progression and creating insane fast content consumption.
Making "everyone" (LFR only players) cry for more content when in fact they are not even doing content. They are in a "enjoy the view" mode.

It's not the noob players fault, it's Blizzard's fault for creating LFR in the first place.

A LFR player is thinking to himself "ia am a raider", "i cleared all the raids", "i need more content".
They should be wiping in a difficult boss. They are supposed to experience progression...because that's the game. That's all games except candy crush.
Hell even candy crush have progression...

[Raelbo]

It's only my opinion that is proper game design to make exclusive content a little bit harder, making it a more epic experience.
By making it available in LFR it's destroying the basic rules of progression and creating insane fast content consumption.

That's only if you conflate all content difficulties together. The way I see it, Mythic Raiding is exclusive content. The fact that it shares a lot of elements with the LFR version doesn't change that.

And while it's true that for an LFR player, consuming the content at that difficulty level is rather quick, it's infinitely better than the same players simply avoiding the raid instance altogether because it's inaccessible due to difficulty.

In the end the amount of time it takes regular raiders to finish their content is unaffected by LFR. And by making LFR available, those players at least get to participate to some degree in the raiding experience.

Making "everyone" (LFR only players) cry for more content when in fact they are not even doing content. They are in a "enjoy the view" mode.

You know, I have been on this forum for many years now. It has been my observation that "LFR only players" aren't really the guys complaining about a lack of content.

A LFR player is thinking to himself "ia am a raider", "i cleared all the raids", "i need more content".
They should be wiping in a difficult boss. They are supposed to experience progression...because that's the game.

Yeah, I don't think you've really figured out what the average LFR player thinks. Nor do I think it's fair for you to decide what they should or shouldn't be doing to have fun. Let people decided for themselves what they find fun, and don't get pissed at the game developer when they have the audicity to provide it. The fact is that Blizzard put LFR into the game because they recognise that some players (actually a lot more players than the actual raiders) would derive significant enjoyment out of experiencing the game in a watered down version which is accessible to them.

In other words:
LFR players should not be wiping on a difficult boss (because really, that's not something they enjoy, and if they do enjoy that they can try the harder modes);
LFR players do actually experience progression. Sure it's not the same progression that heroic or mythic raiders experience, but going back week after week to get more gear and potentially get a little bit better at the encounters is still a form of progression.
If you're going to restrict what the game is to fit a very narrow segment of the playerbase, there won't be a game for much longer. The game has to be different things and offer different experiences, to different people, for exactly the same reason as a restaurant needs a menu and not just one single dish. Because otherwise it won't be able to appeal to sufficient people to be viable.

[Eurhetemec]

The only example of this is Warcraft and that's because at the time within the genre even established games were buggy nightmares. I quote Thott's post when Afterlife quit EQ for WoW about how bugged EQ was versus Warcraft in beta at the time. I've quoted it so many times...

You weren't there, I'm guessing, so you don't know how much shit Thott was talking, frankly. It was absolute rubbish. EQ and DAoC were pretty bug-free on everything but the highest-end progression content - obvs. if that was what you were doing then...

I was playing Earth and Beyond and EQ while Warcraft was in beta and even in beta the game was better than either of those two and less buggy in most instances.

It was a better game. I agree. It was also less buggy than EaB (holy shit flashback lol). It was not, at all, less buggy than EQ. That's a filthy lie. Esp. if you weren't raiding hardcore.

I mean they put Gabe "I don't know shit about a PVE MMO" Amatangelo in charge of combat for a bit and he's clueless.

The combat in SWTOR on release was fine - slightly better than same-period WoW. So not sure what the complaint is here. But WoW evolved and SWTOR didn't. Still, SWTOR lost it's playerbase in months - not the years it took for this to be an issue.

I played Rift at launch and I think it had more to do with it being a WoW clone at a point where Warcraft was still doing relatively solid **corrected. Half my guild bought it but IIRC it was just generic another basic WoW clone without any real spirit behind it in a world we didn't care about. Star Wars was garbage from the start and, sadly, I knew it in beta yet I still picked it up because I was playing with Darth Hater and frankly the idea of having wasted like three years writing about and doing other work on a game that was going to flop was something I didn't want to think about. Star Wars had all the easy content any bad player could want but the combat had a massive delay, the classes weren't balanced between the factions, Bioware couldn't design a decent encounter if their lives depended on it, and they actually copied spells, abilities, cooldowns, rotations, word for word from Warcraft. I wont even get into the lack of modern-day MMO features as the game was basically an EQ clone with better graphics and a Star Wars skin (feature-wise not grind/difficulty).

I don't really disagree with any of this though I think you're too harsh on SWTOR - but yeah it directly copy from WoW.

IF you gave Carbine an IP people gave a shit about, ample time to address bugs instead of forcing a game that was probably 6 months away from what I would assume a relatively playable launch things could have been better. The combat is amazing absolutely fulfilling even leveling currently, but the damage is done. "Raids being hard" didn't harpoon this game. Difficulty does not automatically determine how the game will turn out. EVE is soul-crushing to new players but it's a thriving game for what it is and it's only grown over the years. Where as a game like Star Wars is the easiest game you can imagine and the only thing keeping it afloat are the Cartel Market Whales.

I'll get back to the other points later as I'm currently at work

EVE is a perfect example of my "something unique" point. It's a shit game, but there's nothing like it, so people play it because they want that peculiar experience (I did for a while).

I wasn't saying difficulty harpooned WildStar, at all. What I'm saying is difficulty and massive keying/gating/etc. doesn't attract people. Like, at all.

[cFortyfive]

The combat in SWTOR on release was fine - slightly better than same-period WoW. So not sure what the complaint is here.

Can't say that's how I perceived it or anyone I know who bought that overpriced piece of shit on release like me despite going through the atrocious beta.

[Sansnom]

It's only my opinion that is proper game design to make exclusive content a little bit harder, making it a more epic experience.

That is not what you said earlier. You said it was fact.

There is exclusive harder content. It is Mythic raiding.

By making it available in LFR it's destroying the basic rules of progression and creating insane fast content consumption.

I ask again, because you seem to be avoiding this repeatedly, what does it bother you that they are progressing fast in LFR? LFR is their progression. You have your progression. Is it the fact that they get to see the last boss before you?

If you are running LFR and considered the game done after you finished it, then you are the players LFR is intended for. A quick fast way to the end and move on. If you were really interested in raiding and difficult challenges, you would not be using LFR and spend your time progression in higher difficulty.

Making "everyone" (LFR only players) cry for more content when in fact they are not even doing content. They are in a "enjoy the view" mode.

I think "LFR" players cry for more content FOR THEM. It is not because they have finish LFR and have nothing else. If LFR was removed. they have nothing else. They never did.

It's not the noob players fault

You seem to have a superiority complex.

it's Blizzard's fault for creating LFR in the first place.

Blizzard's error is their focus on raid, not LFR. It was raid raid raid. LFR is an attempt to get more people into raiding because there were nothing else.

A LFR player is thinking to himself "ia am a raider", "i cleared all the raids", "i need more content".
They should be wiping in a difficult boss. They are supposed to experience progression...because that's the game.

Nope. You are the who is thinking that. You like to think the "LFR" player is thinking they are raiders and they are special. I highly doubt that.

You are the one who want to be associated with that special group of "Raiders" as if it is a badge of honor. You may think it is so and wear it with pride. But not everyone cares or notice.

[Raelbo]

The problem is that the system was set up in a manner that enabled and encouraged players take it to that extreme.

I would agree that it allowed players to take it to that extreme (not that you couldn't already using alts), but I would not agree that it encouraged them to do so.

This is why rules and restrictions exist, there are always going to be people who go to the extreme limit of what can be done. The system should be set up in a manner that doesn't let these people reach that point,

Except then you have the problem of unnecessarily restricting other players from being able to do things their way. While I have no problem with protecting stupid players from themselves to a certain extent, I do have an issue with when doing so negatively impacts other players.

and it would've just required any number of changes to avoid that. If only cosmetic items had been locked behind exalted/revered, it wouldn't have been nearly so widespread an issue. If they had locked you into only being able to do dailies for one or two factions per day that would've also prevented the issue from being so pervasive.

All of which is treating symptoms while ignoring the cause. Try and understand some of what Blizzard were trying to achieve:
1) They wanted to keep people busy for a certain amount of time. This is why they gave us incentives to get to revered and exalted.
2) They expected us to pace ourselves sensibly and pick one or two factions a week. This is why they put a VP cap in place, so that there was no incentive to go and grind all four factions simultaneously.
3) They wanted to change the model of people feeling forced to log on every single day to do dailies or miss losing out. This is one of the advantages of removing the daily quest limit - it means that some players can do one faction every day for a week, while another player can play twice a week and do all four factions each time and both will be able to keep up with the VP cap.
4) They realised that a cap of 25 dailies per day didn't actually achieve anything in terms of protecting people from themselves. If someone really wanted to do 50 dailies they would use 2 toons, or 75 dailies using 3 toons or 250 dailies using 10 toons.

What they didn't want was for us to grind all the dailies every day for 2 weeks and then be:
1) Bored (because now there are no more dailies that need to be done)
2) Burned out (because they did the content at 4 times the intended pace)
3) Frustrated that they can't get their rewards which are gated behind VP (because they reached exalted with all the factions 2 months earlier than they should have).

Really, people who did this, did it to themselves.....

A system that is set up poorly isn't somehow the fault of the players, the players aren't the ones who created that system and structured the rewards to require you doing 40+ dailies a day to proceed down the most efficient path.

The system was set up to bring flexibility to players. If you want to complain that the system was set up poorly because it failed to consider people acting like idiots, then sure, I will agree with you, it was set up poorly, but seriously, you cannot possibly absolve the players for their pivotal role in screwing it up.

Because the simple fact is that the system absolutely did not "require you doing 40+ dailies a day to proceed down the most efficient path". The most efficient path would have been to pace yourself and work on one, maybe two, factions at a time, planning your progression so that you got to revered and exalted just in time for when you would have the VP to spend on the items you unlocked. Rushing to do the reputation grind weeks, maybe even months, before you needed the items is the opposite of efficiency.

Honestly, it boggles my mind that there are people who complained about there being too many dailies, and then at the same time whining that the rewards were gated behind both rep and VP, without ever seeming to consider that maybe they were approaching the new paradigm wrong.

[Deleted]

@kinneer

You don't understand.
I like to be told i am a piece of shit. I didn't step in a normal raid in WoD because the game (Blizzard) didn't tell me "you are a piece of shit, step it up boy".
I have transmogs, i have epics, i have access to ALL raids in LFR. Blizzard is like those rich parents trying too hard for their child to love them. "Please love me my dear child, we will do anything for you".

Fuck that, i want an abusive parent with a belt. It's true, i'm not even lying. I didn't step in a raid because i have zero motivation and immersion, because i already have access to everything. (only not item level)