Their answer on LFR necessity was very weak.

[HeedmySpeed]

I think the we're getting confused in here.

People seem to think we are now advocating the removal of LFR (which we still do) but that's not what this thread is about.

Right now we're trying to make a compromise of alleviating ANY inclination to run LFR if you're a serious raider who chose to be "tied down be a schedule" to run Normal or Heroics.

This means sharing the lockout with Normal mode and Heroics.

You think it's as simple of "not doing it" but you've probably never raided competitively or understand that gear isn't just a "reward" but also a "means."

[MoanaLisa]

I dont recall any moment in the history of wow, that in order to stay top you have to run through facerollable content 10 times in the same week.

Top 50 guilds (and those that aspire to be) have always done extra work whether it be something like LFR, farming dungeons or going out and farming mats for potions, flasks, food, etc. All of that--every bit of it--was more tedious than difficult. Same with LFR.

---------- Post added 2012-08-21 at 01:29 PM ----------

People seem to think we are now advocating the removal of LFR (which we still do) but that's not what this thread is about.

It's difficult at this point in time to take anyone seriously that is advocating here or elsewhere for the removal of LFR because it causes them inconvenience.

[Tipton]

When Blizzard first announced the 4.0.1 lockout system, they said this:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...system-in-401/

Q: Why not just track boss kills per player? If I've killed a boss it just won't drop anything.
A: We fundamentally do not agree with a system where a boss kill does not drop something (even if it's for specific people). This also has all sorts of negative side effects associated with it.

So back in 2010, they fundamentally disagreed with one of the core themes of LFR. Tracking individual kills, and the boss dropping no loot if you've already downed it.

Because it may have negative side effects.

Yup, most of their answers on LFR have been very weak. Not that I'm saying LFR is a bad thing, but it still needs a bit more work.

[MoanaLisa]

When Blizzard first announced the 4.0.1 lockout system, they said this:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...system-in-401/

Q: Why not just track boss kills per player? If I've killed a boss it just won't drop anything.
A: We fundamentally do not agree with a system where a boss kill does not drop something (even if it's for specific people). This also has all sorts of negative side effects associated with it.

So back in 2010, they fundamentally disagreed with one of the core themes of LFR. Tracking individual kills, and the boss dropping no loot if you've already downed it.

Because it may have negative side effects.

Yup, most of their answers on LFR have been very weak. Not that I'm saying LFR is a bad thing, but it still needs a bit more work.

2010 and 4.0.1 are a distant memory now clouded by a couple of years time and 3,000,000 lost subscribers. The necessity for rushing LFR to implementation (remember that it was originally planned for 5.X) changed the rules. Whatever negative side effects associated with the idea of a "boss dropping no loot if you've already downed it" were pretty easily over-ridden by actual events.

[Deleted]

I think the we're getting confused in here.

People seem to think we are now advocating the removal of LFR (which we still do) but that's not what this thread is about.

For me it'd be fine to be as it is but to remove tier bonuses. They're just too much and all raiders that are from clearing normal and above do it.

[Maleric]

The problem is that non-raiders have no main mission of something to gear up for. They gear up to have the gear, but they don't raid so that's the end for them. It make farming easier, or questing, or whatever it is exactly that they're doing, but they have no real requirement to have a higher gear level. A large portion of non-raider activities don't require good gear to begin with, and if they're PvPing-non-raiders, they should be getting PvP gear. Raiders gear up to progress and clear content with their guild, then progress to heroic modes, and prepare to clear the next raiding tier of content as efficiently as possible once it comes out.

Blizzard didn't release LFR to help non-raiders gear up, they released it so that non-raiders could 'see the content' because they said, paraphrased, they wanted to make normal raids harder without making it so that a large percentage of the player base never got to see the raid environment and bosses that they worked hard on to create. In WotLK, raids were so easy because they wanted people to be able to see the content, but it miffed raiders because normal modes could be cleared completely the week of release, but then heroic modes were fifty times harder. They made normal modes harder in Cataclysm, but then it made bad guilds and casuals unable to complete those raids. They tried to fix that by making yet another difficulty level, but I guess they didn't want to make it so that if you did this super easy version, you couldn't do the normal version that week if they opportunity arose.

It's actually weird to me that they didn't start out in the first place with gear on par with heroic five mans, given their reasoning and original intended purpose of LFR.

Perhaps they did intentionally add better quality gear in LFR to add an additional stepping stone in the gearing up process for both raiders and non-raiders alike, but it seems more likely to me that they did it because it 'was a raid' and wouldn't seem like a real raid if the gear was just as good as five man gear, or perhaps they thought people would be uninterested in running it without a better gear incentive. If absolutely no raiders ever did LFR, it would be a disaster every time because the only people in it would be casual non-raiders, undergeared players, and brain-dead idiots.

So I guess having better gear in LFR balances things out. Raiders help casuals gear up in the first few weeks of LFR, then the casuals are able to hold their own once those raiders stop showing up.

Also, I was agreeing, in the first place, that 'being forced' to run LFR isn't a big deal.

I think Blizzard probably released LFR to give non-raiders something else to do. If LFR dropped heroic five man quality gear, or gear that was only slightly distinguishable from heroic five man gear, then non-raiders would be less interested in running it weekly. But since it drops exciting stuff like tier pieces, non-raiders will go back even after they've seen the content a few times. And because they have a reason to go back week after week, they'll be that much more likely to keep their accounts active.

Obviously that's not totally in line with the justification of allowing raiders to "see the content." But then, if the blues had been totally honest when making the post that the OP is whining about, they would have said something like "deal with it, if you're a raider than you can find a couple hours a week to run LFR." To blue posters, and to all corporate PR people, vague answers that don't piss people off are sometimes more attractive than direct answers that do.

Now, do non-raiders actually *need* the LFR gear for anything? Maybe not. Some of them will eventually take a stab at normal modes, which the LFR gear will help for, but for a lot of them the gear progression itself is the object. Not that there's anything wrong with that - gear progression is an individual grind just like a lot of other things in this game, and plenty of people find that stuff attractive. I don't see much difference between farming LFR for your 384 set and grinding archeology for the bug mount, grinding rep for the insane, or doing most other non-progression raid activities in game.

[Nerraw]

Now, do non-raiders actually *need* the LFR gear for anything? Maybe not. Some of them will eventually take a stab at normal modes, which the LFR gear will help for, but for a lot of them the gear progression itself is the object. Not that there's anything wrong with that - gear progression is an individual grind just like a lot of other things in this game, and plenty of people find that stuff attractive. I don't see much difference between farming LFR for your 384 set and grinding archeology for the bug mount, grinding rep for the insane, or doing most other non-progression raid activities in game.

Just to expand on this, if people only using the LFR don't need the gear in your opinion (Pascal's), why do Heroic raiders need their gear? Isn't gear hunt the same for every player, to get better stats?

No matter which difficulty you choose to play the game on, getting better gear will always mean that you do better at the part of the game you're playing. This is true for Heroic gear, and it's true for LFR gear, and it is true for the initial dungeon gear for the newbie who just reached max level on his first character and generally don't have much clue of how things work.

[HeedmySpeed]

Whatever negative side effects associated with the idea of a "boss dropping no loot if you've already downed it" (snip)

Oh look, we finally agree on something!

[Deleted]

Top 50 guilds (and those that aspire to be) have always done extra work whether it be something like LFR, farming dungeons or going out and farming mats for potions, flasks, food, etc. All of that--every bit of it--was more tedious than difficult. Same with LFR.

You really don't seem to get it.
This is not food and drinks.
This is gear.
And this is not a previous tier back in TBC, that you had to run a new recruit to have viable gear for current progress bosses.
This the raid that you were supposed to do for progress, only tuned to be offensively easy, and you HAVE to do it till there is not a single upgrade in it, although, your main raiders had BiS gear from previous tier in HEROIC.
And relevant content, shouldn't fall under the GRIND caterogy till all bosses are defeated.

It is not about sacrifices they want to skip.
It is about the design of LFR.
Tuning
Possibility to be farmed infinite times.
Loot that is an absolute advandage for progress making LFR mandatory for people that heve heroic BiS gear, from previous tier.

When you people will manage to understand what the discussion is about maybe we can actually have a discussion.

[MoanaLisa]

Oh look, we finally agree on something!

I'll thank you in advance for not taking quotes out of context.

The full quote:

The necessity for rushing LFR to implementation (remember that it was originally planned for 5.X) changed the rules. Whatever negative side effects associated with the idea of a "boss dropping no loot if you've already downed it" were pretty easily over-ridden by actual events.

was in response to someone talking about a CM's statement at the beginning of Cataclysm that they believed that there would be negative side effects associated with bosses not dropping loot. That changed pretty quickly. You can argue for or against that change but that statement is obviously no longer relevant or in effect with regard to LFR.

It's striking that this argument continues on in the face of the reality that LFR exists, is popular and isn't going anywhere. If anything, over time it will be greatly expanded.

[ganush]

The endless back and forth between people in this thread without listening to what others are saying grows tiresome.

Here's how I see it. There are three possible suggestions for how they proceed with LFR.

1) Remove it. This would negatively impact a large portion of the games playerbase and as such, just isn't feasible or desirable. Believe it or not, it's not desirable to the heroic/normal raider either as more playerbase is inarguably good for the game and it's continued development.

2) Leave it as is. I feel that this system also negatively impacts a large portion of the game's player base. The progression path including LFR and running the same raid on easy mode every week as the one you are progressing in a harder version of is sub-optimal at best and cheapens the content for all those doing it. Putting people in group content they'd rather not be in with players who are of a lesser skill level than them is just not a good game design and leads to anger, frustration and a ruined game experience for the people involve. Believe it or not, having these people in their raids behaving like jerks isn't good for the LFR raider.

3) Have the boss lockout system that LFR already implements extend to normal and heroic. If you don't kill a boss in your normal raid, you'd be able to jump in to LFR at the end of the week and be eligible for loot on the LFR version, but if you did kill the boss already, you'd fall under the existing system of being able to kill the boss in LFR but not being loot eligible.

The way I see it option 3 negatively impacts the smallest number of people and therefore is the best option. I hear very few people with a sound argument against that option, yet I think the arguments against options 1 and 2 are both fair and sound. To me this should be a no-brainer for Blizzard, yet for some reason Dreztal or whatever his name is, seems to have tuned out the valid arguments in favor of the unrealistic, 'if you don't want to don't do it and if your guild expects you to find another guild' line.

Most people are NOT asking for LFR's removal, but it seems that is all a certain sector hears no matter what is said. On the same note, not all LFR players are bads looking for free loot, and the polar opposite's sector is just assuming that is the case. The situation is much more complex and no solution is best for everyone, but I think that the solution that is best for the vast majority is being completely ignored and dismissed by the blue poster in question, and a bunch of people are following his opinions blindly without listening to what players may really be complaining about.

[hyphnos]

They claim *(on blue on front page) that LFR is some kind of ultra hard core world first thing if you want to do and at the same time do normal or heroic. That's quite incorrect in my experience. I mean even the most 'semi-hard core' guild will run LFRs. I've seen a guild that was raiding casually with real jobs and all still run LFR once a week. It's not like it's that hard anyway.

Blah blah blah blah blah. And what is it about LFR that separates it from any and all of the other things you can do in the game that will help you beat raid content that is not raiding?

Nothing.

People run dungeons, farm mats, farm reps, grind out alts to 90 to adjust class balance, and they run LFR all to help them in their normal raiding. None of it is mandatory, despite your delusions to that contrary.

Making the most out of what is offered in the game is what hardcore people do and just because you don't want to have to do one of those things you want it removed.

Seriously? You are so important that Blizzard needs to remove the specific content that some people use to get a leg up in raiding because you don't like it.

Their answer was absolutely correct and LFR is just part of spectrum of things that raiders can choose to do or not to do to help whatever it is that they consider their "real" raiding.

Whatever else you say, I know for a fact you cannot level and gear yourself to get into raiding solely by raiding so you're just ignoring all the other things that you "have" to do to raid. Why not demand they take those out for everyone who doesn't like them as well.

[MoanaLisa]

Since this thread is not quite dead and I haven't seen this posted here, I thought I would put it up for discussion since there hasn't been much comment about it. From Tapesilum on EU:

Please allow me to chip in with a few updated bits of information about LFR, I hope that you view this as an improvement and a step in the right direction over the current version of LFR. We do hear you and your feedback is seriously taken into consideration each time we decide to apply any change to the game.

We know that competitive players seem to dislike the idea of having to go through LFR to get some upgrades and that some will always go there as long as there is any chance at all of getting the slightest competitive advantage from it.

Of course we would prefer that LFR wasn’t part of the progression path for guilds that are raiding normal/heroic content, and so we have made some additional adjustments for the next iteration of LFR, for example:

- Currently we have two separate item levels in LFR, items from the last 2 encounters have a level of 390, while the rest have 384, this made the LFR gear from Deathwing a bit too attractive for just about everyone, including hardcore raiders, so we’ve decided that this needed to be changed for MoP.

Our initial intention was that this difference would work as a special reward for beating such difficult encounters but that didn’t really translate in LFR since those encounters don’t have a difficulty that is relevant enough for this reward to be warranted.

Basically our intention for MoP is that if we decide to give a slight bump and increase the loot table ilvl of end bosses, that same bump won’t be applied to LFR but only to normal/heroic modes.

- While the LFR gear from a new tier will continue to be slightly better than the normal difficulty items from the previous tier, we’ll structure the power level of future tiers’ LFR loot so that it doesn’t replace Heroic gear from the previous raid, and we’re continuing to discuss other solutions internally to limit the pressure for competitive raiders to run LFR.

- We’ve also made a slight change on how Terrace of Endless Spring and Heart of Fear are going to roll out. These two raids will still be split into three separate queues for LFR, but we no longer plan to release them all on the same day, instead, we’ll unlock one queue each week. We hope that by the time all of the bosses are available in LFR, organized raiders will have had two full weeks to work on normal difficulty and one week for Heroic difficulty.

While I don’t expect this to completely stop raiding guilds from feeling some need to go into LFR, I hope that it will provide less incentive, they shouldn’t feel obligated to continue running LFR for a long time on top of their normal/heroic progression, I’d say if LFR remains somewhat interesting for 2-3 weeks to some players that want one or two specific items from there, that’s not such a big issue.

[Deleted]

for the first tier of raiding in mop it doesn't change that much.
You can't get better gear in all slots within 3 weeks. So after 3 weeks you will still need want to do lfr to get upgrades.

For all tiers in mop this also won't change
There is no mention of tier tokens, although it has been said before that some claim that not all set boni are great bonuses, you can still end up wanting needing the chance to get those extra tier tokens from lfr to get the boni.
Another question is how many will actually be covered in BiS heroic items when new tiers come out. And for them it will be an upgrade. Is that a problem probably not it has to do with the RNG god and if you have to compete against other people for gear in your normal raid and wheter or not you raided enough in the last tier(you can't expect to get all your loot from a boss if you only bother yourself to kill that boss 1-2). Will we see a lot of qq'ing about this question of course we will.

The real good question will be if you can get to a point faster with 3 seperate lfr quees, where you can say "I have covered my char in the best possible upgrades from these bosses, I do not need to run that seperate LFR because those bosses can no longer give me upgrades".

[riptal]

The point is for alot of players we dont have time to raid 2-3 times a week to complete normal or hardcore. I've raid hardcore for 3 years and I have enough now and I dont want to waste all my time on that. I'm pretty happy with LFR because even if I dont want to commit myself in a big guild, at least I can see(me and my friends) all the raiding content.

In every other mmo community is asking for a system like that and here people are asking for it to be removed. Damn, I dont understand Wow community! Dont like it, dont play it, but dont ask to remove something that several millions people likes! I'm not asking to remove hardcore mode because I dont play it!

[ganush]

Since this thread is not quite dead and I haven't seen this posted here, I thought I would put it up for discussion since there hasn't been much comment about it. From Tapesilum on EU:

That is a positive change in my view. Both for easing the pressure to run both LFR and your regular raids, but also to help lengthen the content for players who only run LFR due to the lack of a natural gating due to learning curve in LFR.

[Tharkkun]

You really don't seem to get it.
This is not food and drinks.
This is gear.
And this is not a previous tier back in TBC, that you had to run a new recruit to have viable gear for current progress bosses.
This the raid that you were supposed to do for progress, only tuned to be offensively easy, and you HAVE to do it till there is not a single upgrade in it, although, your main raiders had BiS gear from previous tier in HEROIC.
And relevant content, shouldn't fall under the GRIND caterogy till all bosses are defeated.

It is not about sacrifices they want to skip.
It is about the design of LFR.
Tuning
Possibility to be farmed infinite times.
Loot that is an absolute advandage for progress making LFR mandatory for people that heve heroic BiS gear, from previous tier.

When you people will manage to understand what the discussion is about maybe we can actually have a discussion.

Why not improve your skill instead? You act like 1 piece of gear makes some huge difference? I'm sure there's other ways to improve that bottom feed from downgraded gear.

[DisposableHero]

For me it'd be fine to be as it is but to remove tier bonuses. They're just too much and all raiders that are from clearing normal and above do it.

How is the any different from 5 man heroics? gems? enchants? reforging? new valor boosts? rep grinding? etc. There is stuff to do, that provides an in game mechanical advantage when you raid, that you don't like doing but you do anyway because it helps your raiding. Heck lets even count leveling up while we're at it.

LFR is not content for raiders. It is a way to share raiding content with non-raiders which has a secondary effect (I would normally say benefit but you clearly disagree) of being able to fill in gear holes and smooth out progression for raiders. Why are you so specifically harping on this particular feature and not some of the other changes made that make or will make raid preparation even more tedious than it already is. Like rep grinds for valor gear or the new valor system to follow, which will likely add considerably more time to my week to get ready for raiding and progress than LFR did. If anything, LFR let me skip a large portion of the heroic grind, so in the end it might actually save me time in getting ready to raid.

[Deleted]

Care to post what exactly you're talking about, because all I can find is "Don't want to do it, don't do it" (Which I agree with)

Yeah right and when you're searching for a guild or you need to do everything for your guild progress they tell you to go and do it. So yes, you have to do it for the gear.

[Holtzmann]

Yeah right and when you're searching for a guild or you need to do everything for your guild progress they tell you to go and do it. So yes, you have to do it for the gear.

So LFR made it easier for people without much time to invest into the game to raid, and it also gave the hardcore folks more stuff to do for that extra edge on progression. I fail to see how that's a bad thing. If you think it is, then I think you should be asking yourself how badly you want to raid with that guild instead of trying to change what's by most accounts a successful formula.