LFR is not raiding it's basically a tourist mode.
LFR is not raiding it's basically a tourist mode.
Blizzard's definition of end game is always changing. If LFR is the intended end game for casuals (Weekly content) and as a result they have reduced the impact of Heroic Dungeons or other alternative content (Daily content), then that is a reduction of things to do overall. Personally, I would go do Normal and Heroic raids, using the built in group finder if I have to. But I can see how a casual could have run out of things to do because their end game content is now LFR. I used to be in that position before with my alts, and Heroic Dungeons as end-game content had more grind content because you earn tokens to get better gear. That system has been replaced with a once-a-week mode while trivializing heroic dungeon content completely.
I won't say the previous system is a perfect answer for these people who feel they're done with the content, since a grind is never the answer; but there is definitely something lacking in the current system that emphasizes LFR too greatly as an end-game option for casuals. There really isn't much replay value to LFR, as many have said it's just tourist mode. There are few dailies, few dungeons, and Garrisons are practically the only other thing I see available.
In these conversations I feel there is a lot of hyperbole on both sides of the fence. People like to tout how difficult Mythic/Heroic is when really its not. I can't tell you how much anxiety I had when I first stepped into Heroics/ Mythic. I was expecting OMG this is waaaaaay harder this is gonna suck. But in reality its really not that much harder. there is maybe 1 or 2 new mechanics to look out for, there is a perceived difficulty jumped that is caused by the larger health pools and damage and when you initially start it hurts. But what people don't point out that after you get a boss or two down and you start distributing that loot it just gets easier and easier. It all flattens out and becomes retaliative. If your raid is all heroic geared then heroics are as easy as LFR. Just the same as if your entire LFR group was all kidded out in 640 purples.
You could take all the mechanics of heroic and put them in LFR as long as you scaled the damage appropriately. The reason why people come down so hard on LFR is because the fights have to be changed because of communication gap. In a Mythic/Heroic you will always have some type of voice communication. Voice communication is so widespread that every single encounter is designed with it in mind. And that is where the big disconnect is. If all the encounters were designed so that they were intend to be done in a group setting with only the chat box then you might not need all these different difficulties.
More to the point. This is why different difficulty levels are not content. And along those lines neither are achievements, pet battles, mount collecting, collecting all the treasures or any of the other things most people point out are. That stuff is all just busy work, its artificial, its perceived as content when really it is not. New content is something like a new dungeon, timeless isle, fire lands, stuff that progresses the story. This is not me saying this is not content relevant to me this is me saying this content is not even relevant to the game. Nobody ever said oh you didn't really beat FFX because you never got everyone's ultimate weapons, or you didn't become blitzball world champ, or you didn't fill out the entire sphere grid for all your characters.
Nobody says those things because they are completely irrelevant to beating the game, seeing the story, and seeing the arch come to a close. This is why people are saying there is no content.
LFR is boring as hell in this expansion, so I get where he's coming from. Why should you be forced to do normal+ raiding in order to have remotely interesting content?
SoO and MoP in general found a good balance of easy to play yet not insanely difficult. There are only a few exception in MoP to this rule, such as Durumu (spelling?). Likewise the gear had ridiculous colors but didn't look like absolute shit, and the set bonuses existed and the trinkets weren't utter trash.
LFR could be made harder, but then the rewards would have to go back to being useful again and 'real' raiders don't like that one bit because then they feel forced to do the content (a stupid as shit argument).
I don't consider difficulty levels to be new content. All it is is the same content with different numbers and maybe a couple tiny additions. LFR was designed to get more people to use raid content, and is thus by its very fucking nature the same god damn content.
Agreed. This is why if they were to mix a hybrid model of a BC/Vanilla esk model with cross server capabilities and maybe a mode that is flex with a spectator mode coming out at the end of the tier then this could work. As well as dungeon sets that are good quests that take up time and are not cakewalks, but require some effort to achieve.
Very good post sir. You get it, and I thank you.
Content also includes gameplay, not just new areas. Is it 100% new? No. Is it different? Definitely.
And the question being discussed is not going from heroic to mythic. It's LFR = Normal/Heroic/Mythic.
Which, while having the same bosses and zone, is the same to saying, as far as gameplay and experiences go, Dungeons = Raids.
(And no I'm not saying LFR isn't technically raiding. I'm saying the experience it offers is far from what raiding should be. It's a loot piñata).
I'm sorry but I can't wrap my head around this. If you only care about new visuals and not gameplay this is not the right media for you. Perhaps you should be spending your money on movies or series, maybe books? Or at least in more story-based campaign-ish games.
If it really bothers you that much, speak with your wallet: Don't buy expansions on launch. Wait 1 year for the next winter-sale, save a bunch of months worth of subscription, buy the xpac for 50% off or more, and you'll end up with a huge ammount of "new" content as far as non-raiding goes, for a lot cheaper.
But using that logic, planting a farm item in MoP that spawned more rodents would then be considered new content, and that really just misses the point.
The goal should be make things that people enjoy doing. If you aren't enjoying raiding normal, you aren't going to get a kick out of it doing it on mythic.
They could have made 3 or 4 more dungeons and left badge gear, and there would be people who only ran dungeons and bought their gear. That aids people who are later starters to the legendary item, as well it keeps people doing something that they are interested in doing.
I do totally agree with your statement about vote with your wallet though. If people don't quit as a result of things they are unhappy with, Blizzard is rightfully justified as chalking it up to just noise.
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I don't defend there shouldn't be more non-raid content. I completly agree there should more variety of things to do, with more gameplay time, for people who don't enjoy raiding.
All I'm saying is people should complain there's not enough non-raiding content, instead of complaining "there's no content because I already did LFR".
Last edited by Kolvarg; 2015-01-28 at 06:32 PM.
The thought from people that LFR = Normal = Heroic in a content perspective is an argument to remove LFR.
Suddenly you've increased the content. Normal content is by no means hard, but at least it'll take you 20 hours (spread over how ever many pug groups), before you completely finish the content, rather than less than 5.
The biggest "problem" is that Blizzard has made everything accessible. Someone early in the thread posted that "Kara -> Gruul -> Mag -> SSC -> TK -> BT -> Sunwell" was content. For a lot of TBC players, "content" meant just Kara for the entire expansion. You always had something to work towards. You're trying to build a guild so that you can see more content. You're trying to do crazy convoluted quests to try and get that one piece of gear you need so that you can progress.
Now, you open up whatever queue you want, and push a couple buttons. For some people this is how they game, and my thought is that you shouldn't cater to those people. It'd be like me opening up a game of league of legends, seeing the entire map, playing one champion and saying "Well, I've done everything that league of legends has to offer."
It's asinine! Yet because Blizzard has fostered this culture of entitlement, threads and arguments like this get brought up. It's a buzzword for "I don't like X decision, because it affects the amount of content in the game." I really think the people that think there's no content left in the game should just un-sub, and find something better to do with their time.
Depicting being stuck in Karazhan as a positive is ludicrous. That didn't work then, and it certainly wouldn't work now.
The central value proposition of this game is making players feel good about themselves in a social context. If you are stuck in the starter raid, that doesn't happen. You feel like shit. Now, maybe you are saying these players don't deserve to feel good about themslves. Ok, but that's just another way of trying to wish them out of the game, and is not a business-viable answer.
If anything, the rational business move is to eliminate the higher difficulty modes, since they spoil the illusion that clearing the lower modes is something to feel great about.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
I am a little bit confused what kind of content people are wishing for. I played through the end stages of TBC, most of WOTLK and most of Cataclysm and besides pvp/raiding there hasn't been a lot of content in these expansions. You had some daily quests and the daily heroic 5-man to farm up justice to advance your character.
I am not playing that much anymore and I have 2 max leveled characters and I do not feel the lack of content. Usually i log on for 30min to do the garrison related stuff and then have a few hours in the evening to do raids/pvp. For people not wanting to raid there are still daily quests, the apexis daily, which still makes you able to advance your character progression by buying high ilvl items off the apexis vendors. People are still able to craft gear, but it is more moderated by daily cds.
I am genuinely confused why people were playing past expansions and thought they had more to offer than wod today. Apart from the really heavy profession farming everything which was available, ist still available in wod.
Personally I found dailies and having to farm for specific stuff more of a chore than content and I am quite happy I do not need to do these things anymore. If people miss dailies that much, as far as I know there are still the garrison campaigns, apexis daily, extra objectives in the zones, which people can set their own pace at completing them and if they still have free time at their hands, exploring the world is still an option. I thought adding these treasures had the intention to encourage exploring.
Additionly there are still pet battles which offer another big timesink for people.
Are people not doing these kind of activities because it doesn't award some epixxxx? People claiming not having an interest in raiding shouldn't be that much focused on gearing their character to some high ilvl? Am I missing something? People want raid level epics without doing these raids? What are you guys doing with your attained gear? breeze through 5mans even easier?
I am really curious why people focus so much on gearing their character with high ilvl items without ever needing it in game.
I'm sorry if my facetious-ness didn't show through.
I'm responding to the point that someone argued where TBC had so much content because of all the raid tiers, when in reality, most people raided Kara for the entire expansion. In effect, I'm trying to say that having multiple difficulties, including LFR, over multiple raid tiers, is an exponential increase in content over TBC.
Eliminating the higher difficulty modes means that you lose any semblance of a "game", and move towards an interactive movie. That's fine too, and maybe people want it that way. Only blizzard really has the answer.
You go into LF"R", completely negate every possible mechanic just because you can, it won't hurt the teamwork because there is none to begin with right? Then you get some purples as a souvenir.
It's so far away from raiding, organizing, discussing, planning and executing that it should be spelled backwards.
Last edited by Deztru; 2015-01-28 at 09:31 PM.