Blizzard just give up on LFR

[Osmeric]

It's not coincidence that WoWs numbers have plummeted since the inception of LFR.

Yes, it's not a coincidence. LFR was added to slow the exodus that long predated its introduction. People have been shit upon by the exclusionary end game, and have been quitting over it, since Vanilla. Of course, for a long time the influx of new players masked these losses, but the devs knew the game was bleeding even back then -- that's why they kept changing it.

It's perennial hardcore bullshit that people like playing a game that treats them like dirt. No, if a player discovers the game activities one is supposed to be doing aren't designed for them, they quit.

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What? Fights like Durumu and Lei Shen showed players did rise and improve. Initially you wipe a crap ton yeah, but then after a few weeks, it's 1-3 shots. People learn, and do the fights correctly.

Durumu was heavily nerfed. After the nerfs, you could pretty much ignore the maze. Even so, lots of people still got run over by the beam.

And then there's the epic nerf train they applied to Nazgrim.

What LFR could use, I think, is something that tailors individual reward to performance. Also, a mechanism for identifying some kinds of trolling and booting the trolls would be useful.

[Raelbo]

Yes, it's not a coincidence. LFR was added to slow the exodus that long predated its introduction. People have been shit upon by the exclusionary end game, and have been quitting over it, since Vanilla. Of course, for a long time the influx of new players masked these losses, but the devs knew the game was bleeding even back then -- that's why they kept changing it.

It's perennial hardcore bullshit that people like playing a game that treats them like dirt. No, if a player discovers the game activities one is supposed to be doing aren't designed for them, they quit.

Brilliantly put!

What LFR could use, I think, is something that tailors individual reward to performance. Also, a mechanism for identifying some kinds of trolling and booting the trolls would be useful.

Agreed.

My suggestion here is to start by looking at what LFR is trying to achieve and then formulating a strategy to do so.

The objective of LFR has never been to provide challenging content to players. What it does need to do is make content that anyone is capable of doing but for which they should apply themselves. Having encounters where the group wipes because players simply cannot do what it is required of them is not a great idea, but neither is having bosses where you just need to pitch up and the boss will fall over.

In other words, each LFR instance should provide a tailored difficulty appropriate to the group. Of course there is no surefire way to accurately assess the strength of any player, but using ilevel as a guage, especially across a group, can give a decent approximation, since better gear typically indicates participation in harder content.

So I say make LFR instances scale with gear level of the group. And in return for making it harder, individuals toting higher ilevel gear should have a greater chance of getting better gear (an easy solution: increase the chance of TF based on gear).

And like you say, improve the tools to get rid of trolls and afkers by having the game make sure that people aren't afk or horribly underperforming in great gear.

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If Blizzard generally want it engaging and making players have to wake up or learn the tactics through lfr they would be better placed to make it a single player experience like scenario where the player doesnt then have a choice but to learn.

As a raider I appreciate everyone has to start somewhere and am not even judging people based upon meters as mechanics are far more important but I seriously doubt that you learn more from lfr in its current state than any video you can watch.

I don't think you get what Blizzard are trying to achieve. It is not their objective to force players to learn/improve. It's their objective to give players content which requires them to engage with, even if not at a high very skill level.

LFR shouldn't require anyone to play well, but it does need to require us to play.

[ONCHEhap]

"As mentioned in the last developer Q&A, our philosophy toward Raid Finder in Legion has been to reduce the overall number of mechanics, but keep one or two important ones that players will need to react to in order to succeed"

I really don't get it and wonder if it is different on US realms but the experience on EU realms is always a the same.

A couple of people will follow tactics and essentially prop up the rest. Some will do decent dps or healing but ultimately will just tunnel and then there will be those that afk or just don't do even a minimum level.

No amount of work or though as intended by blizzard above will actually change this as we will continue to complete lfr through a combination of the players following tactics propping others up and stacks of determination.

If Blizzard generally want it engaging and making players have to wake up or learn the tactics through lfr they would be better placed to make it a single player experience like scenario where the player doesnt then have a choice but to learn.

As a raider I appreciate everyone has to start somewhere and am not even judging people based upon meters as mechanics are far more important but I seriously doubt that you learn more from lfr in its current state than any video you can watch.

I do appreciate blizzards intention but they have to wake up and realize what lfr currently is for the majority of the community and not rose tint the experience. Sometimes it is painless but many times it is a horrible mess and so long as it can be cleared with a small portion of the group trying people will not learn those encounters, will not learn basic mechanics and will not help with any development of new players into content beyond.

Please blizzard accept what LFR actually is like and put some thought into a different approach.

I actually agree with Blizzard on this
If people don't want to stop being AFK and being carried by themselves,the next solution is to force them to do so

It doesn't even need to be hard,it just has to require people to do more than being AFK or tunnelling a boss

[xuros]

People care because a large number of people still run LFR just for the legendary chance/to build back luck protection. You can get a legendary a week if you clear every raid on LFR, normal, and heroic, and you do the nether disruptor every day it's up. As a supposed mythic raider you should be aware of this more than anybody, since legendaries are more important to you than everyone else. Perhaps you're lucky enough to already have every legendary for every spec of your main, or maybe you're just lying, i have no idea, but either way you should be less oblivious to this.

So you would prefer to run lfr for your chance at a legendary with people that CANT run mechanics properly? As a mythic raider when I run lfr to get that chance up I would prefer not to build up another repair bill. Ssince many cant be bothered to install boss mods and are not able to look outside of their personal tunnel while healing/tanking/DPSing a boss.

[prwraith]

It's honest to god hard not to /follow someone and minimize wow during raid finder. it's SOOO boring. No communication, nothing to keep me entertained, the only reason to go is loot.

[xalenthas]

Put each boss on a "two kills per week" loot lockout and maybe people can stop bitching about LFR as they'd not be running it any more.

[bryroo]

This is my favorite argument. I know people who have had cancer longer than that hadn't had it. I don't hear them saying "Well this is just a part of me now." No fuck that, they say "Well shit if I could fucking get rid of it then I would." Difference is that it's a lot easier to cut out LFR than it is to cut out cancer regardless of the fact that they're one in the same.

Seeing a video game difficulty genuinely compared to a terminal illness is disgusting

[americandavey]

It's honest to god hard not to /follow someone and minimize wow during raid finder. it's SOOO boring. No communication, nothing to keep me entertained, the only reason to go is loot.

Funny. Had to laugh. Anything people do in this game besides pet battles is for LOOT. Micro-Holidays introduced, " If there no reward (LOOT) why do it, waste of resource."

That is what MMOs of today is Loot, Loot, Loot. Run the same dungeons and raids every day every week. I HIGHLY doubt, people go, "The dungeon I ran for the 600th time was AWESOME!"

[Deleted]

Back in WoD LFR was the ultimate tourist mode, which didn't reward any proper gear and was a total snoozefest - people hated it. In legion however, LFR is the most beneficial it has ever been, and I think its fair to adjust difficulty accordingly.

[Raelbo]

It's honest to god hard not to /follow someone and minimize wow during raid finder. it's SOOO boring. No communication, nothing to keep me entertained, the only reason to go is loot.

That sounds to me like you're trying justify freeloading your way through LFR because it's boring, and then blaming this douchebaggery on the fact that there is loot to be had?

To me it's pretty simple: If you're going to go into LFR then you should be required to at least participate. If you can't be arsed to put in the minimal amount of effort that is required to beat it, then you simply shouldn't be there.

The game should identify people who go into LFR and then afk and give them the boot to prevent them getting any loot. People who do this regularly should be blacklisted from LFR.

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Back in WoD LFR was the ultimate tourist mode, which didn't reward any proper gear and was a total snoozefest - people hated it. In legion however, LFR is the most beneficial it has ever been, and I think its fair to adjust difficulty accordingly.

Adjust the level of effort required, not the difficulty. No one should be excluded from LFR because they lack the ability to perform at a required level (provided they at least have a rudimentary understanding of how to play the game), only if they're not prepared to actually participate while they're there.

What this means is that mechanics should be easy to avoid, but deadly if ignored altogether. For example, you shouldn't be required to move out of fire the instant it appears, but also you shouldn't be able to stand in it for the whole fight.

[epLe]

Back in WoD LFR was the ultimate tourist mode, which didn't reward any proper gear and was a total snoozefest - people hated it. In legion however, LFR is the most beneficial it has ever been, and I think its fair to adjust difficulty accordingly.

Yay, one person in this thread have a reasonable perspective on LFR.
LFR needs a challenge to be interesting, and it needs some rewards to be attractive.

Those raiders who kept failing on durumu, shouldn't really be there in the first place.
It is possible to make LFR less accessible, but more interesting and rewarding.

[Deleted]

What about:

Delete LFR Mode

Delete Normal Mode

Keep Heroic Flex

Keep Mythic

Introduce a 5man mode...

People AFK during LFRs I guess because it's easy to hide within a hoard of 24 other players. Put them in a 5man group, if they're slacking and/or AFK - then it's both noticeable and it has an appreciable impact on the length of time taken to complete.

It could be tuned similar to that of Mythic +0-3 so it's "accessible" and allow premade groups so people invested into a guild don't need to expose themselves to the general WoW public.

It would need dev effort to tune mechanics down for 5 people, but that dev effort clearly already is required because Maiden doesn't just delete herself.

Other than that, I like the idea of LFR becoming a single player scenario based thing, doesn't need to be tuned anywhere near that of the Mage Tower challenges but it should still require an "AFK Check" mechanism... hell, it might even teach genuine newbies some raiding basics.

[Katchii]

Yay, one person in this thread have a reasonable perspective on LFR.
LFR needs a challenge to be interesting, and it needs some rewards to be attractive.

Those raiders who kept failing on durumu, shouldn't really be there in the first place.
It is possible to make LFR less accessible, but more interesting and rewarding.

To be fair, Durumu maze was REALLY hard to see if you didn't know exactly what to look for and what angle your camera had to be to see it. The purple/black cloud of goop wasn't exactly easy to distinguish boundaries with. I'm a fairly good player, but even I had trouble with Durumu until I decided to watch a video explaining it better than the asswipe fuckwads who respond in LFR with "git gud" or similar bullshit...if they respond at all. And then I had to practice it at least once before I got it down.

There's a huge difference in difficulty from clever mechanics and not being able to decipher exactly what's going on. With clever mechanics you can see, you KNOW what you did wrong and can learn from it. With Durumu and his maze...that's not the case., it's a difficult almost indecipherable blob unless you know what to look for. Knowing it's a maze doesn't help unless you can tell where the "walls" are.

[Deadite]

Make LFR share lockouts with every other raid. Boom! Fixed. 99% of the time the twat that is pissing and moaning all the time or is AFK is some 'real raider' that thinks LFR is beneath them. They resent that players as awesome as them have to get down in the muck with people they despise. If they all just fucked off LFR would be a much better place.

[Softbottom]

They should have just made normal slightly easier and made it so you can que for it (which realistically you can with the LFG tool in place now). Then just have heroic as your first "real raiding" and mythic for the real challenge. Having 4 difficulties is kinda ridiculous.

[kamuimac]

Funny. Had to laugh. Anything people do in this game besides pet battles is for LOOT. Micro-Holidays introduced, " If there no reward (LOOT) why do it, waste of resource."

That is what MMOs of today is Loot, Loot, Loot. Run the same dungeons and raids every day every week. I HIGHLY doubt, people go, "The dungeon I ran for the 600th time was AWESOME!"

and its been like this since forever - people play morpgs for this slow but stable progress of their toon - if progress is stopped at some point people stop playing

its really that simple mechanics

and its devs job to provide them that progress somehow

look at asian mmorpg - you have milion sources of char upgrades there - and that model works - streamlines wow legion model is failing completly.

[prwraith]

To me it's pretty simple: If you're going to go into LFR then you should be required to at least participate. If you can't be arsed to put in the minimal amount of effort that is required to beat it, then you simply shouldn't be there.

There you go.

IF there was something I needed to do, some task, something I can contribute other than facehugging the boss mindlessly. I would gladly do so. But right now, there's no need to. There's NOTHING for me to do. Hell I could macro my characters actions and just tape it every few seconds for moderate dps. That's how basic LFR is now.

[Advent]

Sorry, the title "just give up on LFR" and all the subsequent posts about it ruining the game seemed to really indicate otherwise... But, maybe it just wasn't phrased well.

I do agree making LFR harder will never accomplish making people better raiders, and I don't think the mode SHOULD be looked at in that manner. It's not a training guide for organized raiding, it's something to give those of us that don't have time to join a guild anymore (or never wanted to in the first place) something to do, especially since the story scenes are in those raids.

As for there being some mode to teach people to raid... imo, that "mode" should be other players. When things like LFR and other matchmaking systems are brought up, people inevitably complain about how they killed the social aspect of the game. So then why aren't we looking to the community to "train" players?
Obviously some noob isn't going to join a progression guild, but there's becoming a real dearth of guilds that will take new players on and help them learn, and even in rando pugs that won't get past 1-2 bosses, people are looking for crazy ilvls and achievements for already completing the raid. And that's stood up for all the time.

Are the people who complain about LFR ruining the game willing to take on the task of helping others cross that barrier to raiding? Or are they the ones running LFR anyways, and acting like elitists to all the casuals?

This right here is exactly what I've been thinking for years. Everybody wants a positive community, but nobody is willing to put in the work. Back in TBC it was normal for people to be patient and helpful, but nowadays people want a higher caliber of players without having to DO anything to facilitate that. Every single interaction you have with any player you come across is supposed to build the community you desire, so get off your "can't be bothered ass" and BE the positive change you want to see. LFR and LFG didn't kill the community, *people* did by not maintaining their friendships and by not reaching out anymore. Nobody really WANTS a community, otherwise you'd take steps to create it.

[Dartz1979]

bah another LFR bash thread by OP.. so it seems.. i like the LFR system i can get gear to sell. buff augment runes to sell/stick in gbank and or give to my fellow gamers so yeah... lfr is not a bad thing mister/miss OP

[Montanahax]

Lfr should either be MoP lfr difficulty and same gear as normal but with lfr iLvL. Or WoD lfr difficulty with random loot just like it did in wod