Blizzard just give up on LFR

[Cantheal]

LFR is what it is and sooner ppl just take it for what it is and all that brings.

The thing is LFR is very confusing to me. I mean between everyone in every thread of this nature being able to do 25% of damage to boss+ or being able to carry it by themselves, or when you do go do one the there is always one or two people that tell everyone how good they are and bad everyone else is ie "so, do you think all you guys can keep from fucking up" ect, I do not see why on earth I have EVER had to release. How it is possible that can happen with so many that "carry entire raid" that a grp could wipe.....

/s

If you want to run it for whatever reason even though you are top 2 world blah blah then run it and who gives a crap if some of the other ppl in the grp do way less healing or dps than you and look at it as their end game or plain and simple don't do them. Why would you if it bothers you so much and there are plenty of other fun/productive things to do.

[HuxNeva]

I think some people do want a slightly more meaningful experience in LFR, but unfortunately they are held hostage by human nature in anonymous groups. The 'LFR enthusiast' will through the nature of the queue always be confronted with a significant proportion of people seeking just a loot pinata, and that will afk as much as possible. Worse than that, in each group there will be a few trolls actively getting a kick out of wiping the raid as much as possible in the hopes of getting people raging. So Bliz has to tune around this, resulting in those that want a mild challenge feeling 'insulted'. 'Kicking' has proven not to be the solution to eliminate the afk/subversive, as it can be easily trolled. You need to solve the 'social' problems if you ever want the LFR you are hoping for. Guids are a way to solve the anonymity of the crowd and the accompanying behaviour, but in practice few people seem interested to form an LFR guild, probably because if you are going to invest time in the game, you would join a regular guild and run N/HC with them, rather than become the gatekeeper GM of an LFR community.

[Illana]

LFR became obsolete the moment cross realm group finder was introduced.

It's high time it dies

[oldgeezer]

LFR became obsolete the moment cross realm group finder was introduced.

It's high time it dies

How can it be obsolete when it serves an entirely different purpose? Weird.

[Illana]

How can it be obsolete when it serves an entirely different purpose? Weird.

and what purpose would that be?

[luc54]

and what purpose would that be?

How about the fact people get to raid without having ridicullous requirements ie. 10-20 itemlevels above the raid instance and heroic achievement. Lot of people are bad in the random group finder so they just try to compensate it by getting highly geared people which aren't even always better as some guilds carry baddies to high gear or some people get very lucky with drops.

[Flurryfang]

I'm not sure that I accept your assertion that we need more players who want to go into organised raiding, but putting that aside for now, what's your solution to the problem?

How do you make organised raiding more attractive? It's already got shinier gear + mounts + titles. What else can you add to motivate the playerbase?

Well when it comes to LFR, while i do agree that having some form of showcase/rollercoaster difficulty for hardcore casuals is a good thing, i do think that LFR can be used to give a little bite of what raiding can provide. First of all, LFR should not just be a toned down version of already existing raids. I think that raids, that have the LFR tag should be unique raids in themselfs, that is totally designed to teach raiding, show the fun sides of raiding and give a good set of intro gear for aspiring raiders. My main problem with LFR is that it simply removes all surprise from a new raid and leaves nothing untouched. Normally 1 one of the biggest push mechanics for me when it comes to raiding, is seeing unique and new content: LFR removes that completly from anybody, who is not raiding from day 1. Having unique LFR-raids would return the mystery of raids and make raiding more attractive, because you are actually earning content instead of gear.

Then i would proberly also try to make LFR a tool for guild recruiting by being able to see the performance of people in LFR and have it be a showable thing, like the tranning grounds. Wildstar have a system, that allows you to see after each dungeon, who did what best when it comes to dmg, survivability and healing. I would love for that to be implemented in this new LFR, because it would allow guild leaders or guild recruiters to look for good people in LFR without having to use Addons. Having it be visual to everybody after each clear, would also allow players to see their own performance and to better themselfs to be more lucrative for guild recruiters, if they are in need of a raiding guild. While this is a very new concept, i would atleast make it so that LFR have a clear purpose for everybody and not just for showcase.

Outside of LFR, raiding can still be improved. Shiny things like gear, mounts and titles are great, but they are mostly only given to mythic raiders, which is something out of reach for the large majority of the playerbase. What needs to be done is simple innovation: We need more boss fights, which changes things completly. Not to be too much of a nostalgia guy, but fights like Flameleviathan, Hodir, General Vezax, Gunship battle, Blood Queen Lanathel, Halfus Wyrmbreaker and others where numbers get bumbed, things get changed up completly or you just get to show your skillz as playing the game in general, not only your class, are fights which are both fun and interesting the first and 100th time. Raiding should be where dps changes from fight to fight, where role changes and you are challenged in ways you would normally not be challenged. The high mythic raiders proberly love to have fights, where dmg can be calculated, where everything can be set up from the start and where you comb matters alot, but in reality, such fight often gets boring for the guy, who does LFR, Normal and Heroic at the same time.

It has been way too long, since we have had a boss fight, which offered an experience unique for raiding. Nowadays, most raid bosses are just upscaled dungeon bosses with a bit more flare, and while this is good for the first experience, it is not a good thing when you ask most players to do the same things over 3-4 raid difficulties.

[Youn]

I personally find the random group finder full of Toxic people. Link, X or Y achievement for invite! Or asking for an item level of Heroic gear to do Normal mode. Why would anyone bother?

[oldgeezer]

and what purpose would that be?

Automated queueing? Are you new to the game?

[grandgato]

First of all, LFR should not just be a toned down version of already existing raids. I think that raids, that have the LFR tag should be unique raids in themselfs, that is totally designed to teach raiding, show the fun sides of raiding and give a good set of intro gear for aspiring raiders

Translation = I don't think players who participate in LFR deserve to see the real raid, and we should lock that to pre-made difficulties only.

Sorry, we aren't going back to a system where players have the potential to bar other players from even being able to experience the end game story outside of youtube.

[Synthium]

OR

Dont do lfr if you hate it. I find it amussing that other people are so quick to dictate what others should or shouldnt get. I suspect if they decided to gut gear from mythic or heroic youd object.

The WoD system was awful. It was pretty fucking clear that gear was meant as a dunce cap. Subsequently lfr participation crumbled and so did subs. Turns out you have to actually offer people incentive. Who would have thought?

Hahaha, of fucking course I'd object. It makes me sad that people really don't see the problem in this. The amount of effort you put into something should be reflected in that something. I don't care if you think a game should be an exception. This is my hobby. It's how I choose to spend my fun time. If someone can do absolutely nothing and get rewarded for it, it's baffling to me as to how you don't see the problem in that. It is a problem, and a big one at that. I usually don't like to pull this analogy but I am going to for the sake of argument and humor me please:

If you and your colleague on the same workplace working within the same company get different wages, more precisely, he gets more money monthly than you for doing the same thing, OR - he gets the same money as you while working half the shifts and doing more mundane, less tough work, would you be fine by this or you would object?

Again, I don't care if you think that just because this is a game that shouldn't apply, because it should. I put effort into my hobby, which is WoW. The least I ask of people who want the same gear as I have is to put the same effort, which is a lot less than people like you think.

[Deleted]

LFR isn't going anywhere, and the idea of removing bosses to make people want to go to normal raiding is idiotic. The majority do not want to do normal or above, they have tried to get people to do it for years and it never works because nobody wants it. However yes, the problem right now is that if they want to make it an actual challenge it will be a painful process because the community will have to first adapt. We have had easy mode for a long time, changing it now will take a long while.

MC was nothing more than LFR, honestly, just without automatic matchmaking. We have gone a long way since then, and people probably have overall better gear when they enter LFR then before with MC (because we usually have a bit better itemised gear, even with bad stats). Still, you probably have the same amount of people who know what to do and the rest are "warm bodies" to fill up the raid. Welcome back to Classic, just with more convenience than before.

Anyway, they should keep the difficulty as it is as long as gearscore is the only check for letting people in. If they really want to put in punishing mechanics in every boss and not only the 1-2 last bosses, then they should probably re-introduce PG:Silver as entry barrier. It was easy enough to do so would probably not weed out many bad players, but would at least keep out the laziest of people who don't even bother to do PG.

BTW I think that there should be only 2 difficulties - one with automatic matchmaking and one with premade groups. If people then need a ramp-up of difficulty in premade groups, they can unlock hardmodes like we had in Ulduar. That was the most organic way of difficulty management which they have ever done and there is a reason why many people see Ulduar as the epitome of raiding design.

[grandgato]

If you and your colleague on the same workplace working within the same company get different wages, more precisely, he gets more money monthly than you for doing the same thing, OR - he gets the same money as you while working half the shifts and doing more mundane, less tough work, would you be fine by this or you would object?

LFR rewards are inferior to all other raiding difficulties, so your analogy doesn't really apply.

[Nurvus]

1 - Make raid content available as a static iLevel single player challenge with reasonable difficulty (or multiple levels like Bronze, Silver and Gold).
This way players WILL learn how to play and cannot complain they do not have access to content.
2a - Make LFR challenging again
OR
2b - Remove LFR and improve Group Finder.
Even with Group Finder as is, removing LFR would make people use Group Finder for Normal Raids a lot more.

[Deleted]

I completely agree with allowing players to do raid content as a single player challenge with reasonable difficulty - possibly with a static gear level.
That way they "see the content".
And remove LFR or make it tough again.

I would not mind that, if they keep the other methods of gearing up (like mythic+ and catch-up gear), as long as these solo challenges provide some kind of transmog collection which mirrors the corresponding raid gear to some degree. Honestly, I only run LFR for transmog items, because the gear which drops there usually is below the items which I get from other sources (exclude organised raiding, I don't have motivation and time for that anymore).

[Nurvus]

I would not mind that, if they keep the other methods of gearing up (like mythic+ and catch-up gear), as long as these solo challenges provide some kind of transmog collection which mirrors the corresponding raid gear to some degree. Honestly, I only run LFR for transmog items, because the gear which drops there usually is below the items which I get from other sources (exclude organised raiding, I don't have motivation and time for that anymore).

The solo challenge would have a weekly lock and give gear just like LFR.
It would be like Proving Grounds but less about testing your basics, and more about testing your ability to learn and keep up with mechanics.
It would have all the mechanics of Normal.
You might have a party of NPCs so you can fulfill any Role and deal with mechanics properly.

[RoKPaNda]

Hahaha, of fucking course I'd object. It makes me sad that people really don't see the problem in this. The amount of effort you put into something should be reflected in that something. I don't care if you think a game should be an exception. This is my hobby. It's how I choose to spend my fun time. If someone can do absolutely nothing and get rewarded for it, it's baffling to me as to how you don't see the problem in that. It is a problem, and a big one at that. I usually don't like to pull this analogy but I am going to for the sake of argument and humor me please:

If you and your colleague on the same workplace working within the same company get different wages, more precisely, he gets more money monthly than you for doing the same thing, OR - he gets the same money as you while working half the shifts and doing more mundane, less tough work, would you be fine by this or you would object?

Again, I don't care if you think that just because this is a game that shouldn't apply, because it should. I put effort into my hobby, which is WoW. The least I ask of people who want the same gear as I have is to put the same effort, which is a lot less than people like you think.

At no point do LFR raiders get anything even close to the same gear that I get from higher difficulty raids. The chance exists for them to get a decent Titanforge but what rational person actually gives a fuck if some pleb has the very low chance to get *A* piece of decent gear that's at the level that I get from every. single. boss. ?!

This games largest subscription numbers existed in an era where LFR didn't exist and a minority of the game entered raids. Trying to correlate sub numbers dropping due to not being able to raid is just factually incorrect. The drop in sub numbers in Cataclysm was largely related to the difficulty of 5-man Heroic Dungeons (which I personally loved). It left nothing for the casual players to do on the PvE end of the spectrum and the game suffered for it.

The heart and soul of WoW has always been in its 5-man dungeons, not raids, which Blizzard recognized (finally!) and implemented in Legion. There was always plenty of things for players to progress their characters on that didn't require raiding.

LFR is an indefensibly bad system that should never exist in an MMO especially with how easy Normal mode is now. If you can't bother looking for a group, then you shouldn't raid - period. See: Mythic+ dungeons.

MMO's should never reward players who have a sense of entitlement. MMOs require time and dedication by design. It's trying to push a square peg into a round hole. The game should be playing to the genres strengths, not its weaknesses. Upending that design to appease people is tying one hand behind the design teams back which is terrible for the game as a whole.

Just because you use the word indefensible that doesn't actually make it indefensible. LFR exists so that we raiders don't get bullshit filler tiers like ToC/Firelands. You may have noticed that every single raid tier we've gotten since LFR has been decently sized with a decent amount of resources poured into it's assets, better voice acting, etc. Not phoned in bullshit like the entirety of Cataclysm. Prior to LFR so few people ever zoned into a raid that they weren't worth the resources spent on them. LFR gives me higher quality raid tiers, I'm fine with it's existence. By far the most entitled players in this game are Mythic raiders.

[Raelbo]

LFR rewards are inferior to all other raiding difficulties, so your analogy doesn't really apply.

Actually, his analogy applies perfectly. Ironically though it destroys his argument by demonstrating why LFR gear is perfectly fine.

[vipers]

only problem is ppl who keep whining it all the time

[Synthium]

At no point do LFR raiders get anything even close to the same gear that I get from higher difficulty raids. The chance exists for them to get a decent Titanforge but what rational person actually gives a fuck if some pleb has the very low chance to get *A* piece of decent gear that's at the level that I get from every. single. boss. ?!

Because they obtained the gear (in vast majority of cases) by doing absolutely nothing. Know what I'd rather them do? To actually do normal/heroic, get decent loot while getting good at the game. It's not that hard neither it is time consuming.