How would you like to handle the "gap" between LFR and Normal raiding?

[Dakara]

No, what everyone is saying is "raids got harder", they didn't. They got EASIER. The problem is that back then raids were a PRIVILEGE, now everyone assumes it as a RIGHT. The reason that people are doing better is because now people who i wouldn't let into our heroic MgT group is trying to get into raid.
And there is no reason to suddenly nerf raids to accommodate for that.

Mate you're delusional. The only thing "harder" about Vanilla raids were the gear checks (in part due to terrible itemization) and the logistics of running a 40 man raid. But given you'd be carrying 10-15 of them anyway, (up until Naxx anyway) the logistics were pretty similar. TBC definitely brought a challenge, but you're living under a rock if you don't think raid bosses are more complex these days. Maybe not all of them sure, but plenty are. What's changed is the fact that today we have UI's to practically play the game for us combined with step by step youtube guides.

As for raids being a "privilege" (in caps no less). Give me a break. The only thing I was "privelage" too back in those days was being a single man in his early 20's with a few part-time jobs so I could raid 7 nights a week. (Yes, we raided 7 nights a week, it was the only way to gear new raiders). Now, I'm so under pirvileged to be married with a daughter, 30 years old and an Airline Captain that I don't raid I should quit wow immediately.

Seriously, as I said, the challenge is in heroics. If you're not doing heroics then don't complain about things being too easy, and if you are, then who cares how easy the rest of the game is?

Most gamers don't play WOW for challenge, we play it to be entertained, just like we watch TV, read books and play other games (shocking i know). You want a real challenge? Try raising kids and paying a mortgage in today's economy.

[Deleted]

Yet a majority of the player base thinks that T8 was the best raid ever, and that was far harder than current raids. By that logic shouldnt we make raids harder?

I am saying content does not matter. If a simple room with 10 slimeblobs would produce higher numbers than ulduar-karazhan-tot and what not THEN slimebob raid is the better raid. You can ride ahead on a rotting horse or you can try to find another. With a sub number drop as big as this I do not believe blizzard can affort to just try to maintain their playerbase as it is. They will try to get old folks back and to get new ones into the game. Content just doesn't matter anymore in how to make a change. They will do a business move and business doesn't care for play opinions. It cares for program code and numbers. I tell you that in a abstract manner to make you quit thinking in terms of majority or quality... It just doesn't matter anymore. They have a problem and in a rational economy like ours they have not much possibilities how to take a problem like that on.

[soulzek]

You can probably guess which one I want (D) as the other 3 have very harmful side effects. A) makes all current hardcoreish 10mans angry and probably quit (I am one of them, i will quit if they choose A, i enjoy the difficulty currently). B) will just make it too easy again and will clear Dragonsoul in a week on normal, and C) made everything too easy too. D) I honestly can't see any negatives except it being cleared quickly but if it shares the same gated system as LFR it will be perfect. I can see myself running it a lot with alts instead of LFR because I just can't stand LFR :P

[celinamuna]

And yet there is no reason to nerf normal mode. There's a lot of people who are raiding it and who it is appropriate difficulty.
Create 10 man LFR so everyone who can't handle normal mode can raid as a group : Win-Win.

[Deleted]

I am saying content does not matter. If a simple room with 10 slimeblobs would produce higher numbers than ulduar-karazhan-tot and what not THEN slimebob raid is the better raid. You can ride ahead on a rotting horse or you can try to find another. With a sub number drop as big as this I do not believe blizzard can affort to just try to maintain their playerbase as it is. They will try to get old folks back and to get new ones into the game. Content just doesn't matter anymore in how to make a change. They will do a business move and business doesn't care for play opinions. It cares for program code and numbers. I tell you that in a abstract manner to make you quit thinking in terms of majority or quality... It just doesn't matter anymore. They have a problem and in a rational economy like ours they have not much possibilities how to take a problem like that on.

Though does boss kills = to success of a raid?

Naxxramas for example allowed me to clear naxxramas on 6 characters, did that mean I enjoyed the raid? Did that mean that I consider the raid to be a success? Why is a raids success measured in the players ability to clear it?

If 10000 people clear one raid with 5 characters, or if 20000 players is able to clear one raid 2 characters and the second raid was enjoyed by more players, which one 'succeeded' the most?

If 20000 participate in a raid and enjoys is or 30000 people participate in a raid and do not enjoy it, which is the bigger success? By your logic ragefire chasm is the best dungeon ever made since it got the highest participation of all dungeons, and challenge modes are the worst 5 mans of all time.

Do you see where the participation = success of content logic falls short? Sure, participation is a part, but looking blindly at it just tells you nothing. You need to understand the numbers, not only see them.

As mentioned earlier aswell, WotLK was current content for longer than the other expansions making more guilds get a "clear" on the content on wowprogress.
ICC was current content for a year, you cant compare that with something that was current content for 6 months.
Same goes for naxx, everyone and their mother was running naxx even in T10. WoW players are achievement whores, and the T7 and T8 raids had insane amount of titles encouraging players to go back there. In wrath, the gear up process went through old raids and random heroics (though not so much as today). In cata and MoP the gear up process changed from running old raids to other stuff. Of course the raid participation drops.

This is the problem with most threads on WoW forums. People refer to numbers as hard evidence, with 0 reflection over what does numbers actually means. Is there a reason why the numbers differ etc?

Lets take a step back and look at this with some logic instead of looking at numbers with 0 thoughts behind.

What do we know? Yes we know that raiding participation dropped through the years. Are there any reason for this?
Well first off, subscribers dropped. There will of course be less participation with less players.
WotLK was a longer expansion being out for 2 years.
The raids in WotLK and Cata was also nerfed harder than MoP raids when the content went obsolete.
WotLK old content was also nerfed by the unexpected gear inflation. blizzard stated this that the introduction of HMs / HC mode increased the gear inflation more than intended in WotLK.
MoP is not over yet. The kills in previous content will continue to increase even in T16. As T7/T8/T9 did in T10 and T11/T12 in T13.
WotLK raids had a ton of achievements and titles. Stuff like undying, the immortal, champion of ulduar, conqueror of ulduar, herald of the titans, tribute to insanity, tribute to dedicated insanity, tribute to immortality encouraged people to FARM old content and just in general do old content more. Cata and MoP lacks this except for the glory achievements. There was just much more incentive to do old raids in WotLK further inflating the content participation.
WotLK had double lockouts. People could raid both 10 and 25 man. This led to more pugs which also increased raid participation.
The WotLK raiding model with double raid lock out, two year expansion and insane gear inflation, a ton of achievements, titles, pets, mounts just increased raiding participation in general. That is impossible to deny. This had nothing to do with the actual raids, just how the expansion was designed in general.

Now that we listed some basic explanations as to why the numbers could look like to look now, lets take up the big villain.
How are people spending their time?

In WotLK, you did not really have much to do. You could farm you achievements, level those alts, you had the ToC dailies. But once it came to gearing up your character, the only thing you could do outside of doing 1 daily heroic for the daily emblems, was running raids. You geared up through raids, the main source of Emblems (the counterpart to valor points for those that are new to the game) was from raids, not from daily heroics, dailies, whatever. So what you did when online was doing the occasional achievement/pet/mount hunt, the ToC dailies but mostly, you looked for raids. I spent most part of the WoW time looking for raids for all my 4 alts, clearing T7, T8, T9, T10 each week on multiple characters. That was what you did.
Again. You raided. That was what you did in WotLK.

Cata came along. How did you gear up new characters now? Yes, of course through raids, though we had something new aswell, step one, daily quest played a far bigger role. You had to grind dailies, grind dungeons for reputation. You got a lot of free gear through that, so that was the natural gear up process. You get exalted with the reps you needed. Firelands patch further stressed dailies, people should do dailies, it awarded great gear. Now you might say, well it is the same as ToC! No. The difference was that ToC was mostly cosmetical. Those items you could buy in ToC really do not count as they were so shit. Nobody bought them, ToC dailies was 99.99% cosmetical, so a lot of people skipped them. FL dailies was participated by much more players. Same goes for Tol Barad. It was basically mandatory farm in T11 as it had some BiS items for almost every class.

So what happens? Players have to spend hours upon hours grinding up reputations, doing dailies? Do they magically play more hours? No, they just prioritise their time down. What this meant was that players took time away from raiding to do dailies, farm valor points etc since this was what you did with your free time. Your free time was no longer 100% raiding. They implemented 5 man HCs that awarded gear just sligthly worse than the previous raid tier. ZG/ZA gave 353 items, T11 normal was 359. The difference was that ZG/ZA also gave you reputation allowing you to grind the 4.3? dungeons gave 378 items. T12 normal was 378 aswell.

Granted, it WotLK you had ToC5HC giving i219, the same as ulduar. The difference is that this was 1 instance. It was not enough, and you could not farm it in the same way you could farm 4.1/4.3 instances. The ICC instances was closer to what 4.1/4.3 was. Though still not 100% the same. 4.1/4.3 instances was still more farmable and more important than ICC instances was. In short.

WotLK gear up process: Old raids complemented by heroics.
Cata gear up process: dailies and heroics complemented by old raids. In T13 you also had LFR.

Raids got the back seat in cata. Kinda obvious to understand here why the raiding participation was higher in WotLK.

Now, lets move over to MoP. What happened in MoP? Mists of Farmdaria. Where to start? Dailies, dailies, dailies. LFR.
Outside of farming the dailies, managing your farm for those 300+ stat food, getting the charms, you did not time to find raids. You spent your days doing a million dailies. When you actually got an alt up, you still barely had time for it between grinding on your main for raiding, raiding was no longer the main focus. So your alts geared up through dailies. You did LFR, bought valor items, did dailies, raids was very low priority. Valor and LFR gave you good enough gearing up and you needed to do dailies for coins, raiding was not really needed.

So to repeat again.

WotLK gear up process: Old raids complemented by heroics.
WotLK time spent: Raiding > Old Content > HCs >Achievement farming ( a lot of which in old raids ) > Dailies > Leveling alts
WotLK time spent on alts: Raiding > HCs > Other

Cata gear up process: dailies and heroics complemented by old raids. In T13 you also had LFR.
Cata time spent: Dailies > LFR (in T13) > HCs > Raiding > Leveling up alts > Old Content
Cata time spent on alts: Dailies > LFR (in T13) > HCs > Raiding > Old Content

MoP gear up process: LFR > HC scenario > Dailies > HCs complemented by Raids
MoP time spent: LFR> HC scenario > Dailies > HCs > Raiding > Achievement farming > Leveling up alts
MoP time spent on alts: LFR > HC scenario > Dailies > HCs > Raiding. (like you even had time for leveling on your alts)

LFR, Dailies and Valor capping consumed so much time on just your main, who even had time for your alt? Old raids was no longer the optimal gear up process. Low incentive to do old content. Few titles, achievements etc. Gear up process not that effective in old raids. Emblems / Valor shifted from coming from raids to LFR/Dailies/dungeons. Grinding extra roll coins.

So maybe now you understand? Lower playerbase, split raid lockouts, Longer expansion, more incentive for old content. The reason raiding declined have nothing to do with the ways raids are designed. It is about how the expansion is designed. Previously if you wanted to raid, you raided. If you want to raid now, you grind dailies and LFR. People are "forced" to spend time outside of raids to optimise their characters for raiding. This is the reason why raiding decreased.

The first step would be to remove LFR, Make bonus rolls coins far easier accessable (done now in 5.3, so not issue anymore). Make dailies less mandatory. Make old raids drop more valor points making them the source for gearing up. Make something with the raid lockouts, more incentive for old raids. Make your characters less time consuming on 5 mans/dailies etc.

See how far you can get with logical thinking over blindly looking at numbers.

Blizzard choking free epics down the throats of people through LFR, valor points&coins (due to these coming from other sources than raiding), HC scenarios and so on is hurting raiding because people spend time not raiding to get ready for raiding.

<captain obvious flies away>

[RickJamesLich]

You can't imagien why people would rather avoid stuff they wiped on endlessly?


Gear doesn't matter, there are still too many mechanics. You haven't understood why people are struggling, really, have you?


The issue isn't gearing. it's mechanics.


Compared to what? Spamming HC scenarios? Nope.


You haven't got it, have you? The raids have too much going on. That doesn't get fixed by gear alone except at the chronically overgearing stage.

Only thing you've been right about so far is the HC scenarios (the ones which make t14 irrelevent for toon progression.)

Wow, people wipe endlessly to tier 14 with tier 15 LFR epics? lol, yes, I'm sure you will think I'm crazy, but man that's really a L2P issue at that point. It sounds like you are expecting a raid where bosses take 5 hits and drop dead, giving epic lewts in the process. And yes, you can still get epics such as rings and trinkets from tier 14 so there would likely still be upgrades for these folks. I'm trying to understand what's so insanely tough about the mechanics, perhaps you can explain a few?

That being said, so you are pretty much expecting a raid that pretty much has none of the characteristics of a raid besides the fact that 10 people are in there, correct? That's pretty much the opposite of what raiding is, perhaps instead of asking for an easy mode - I think even you'd agree that heroic scenarios would be a better option here.

[Firebert]

If we remove LFR there is no gap anymore.

If you remove raids entirely there won't be a gap either, and removing LFR will mean that raids get less exposure and will end up not being worth making any more, hence no more raids.

There is no "remove LFR" without "kill all raiding in a slow and painful way".

---------- Post added 2013-05-26 at 12:22 AM ----------

The raiding has been on a constant decline, however the biggest decline happened between T13 to T15. What happened here? Yes, the introduction of LFR.

The raiding population had crashed even before LFR got released (MMO-champ released info about Firelands exposure and it was approaching Naxx 1.0 levels), and was rushed in to try to make raids worth making again. Blizzard cite the difficulty of 5-mans to the loss of 2m subs, not LFR.

[RickJamesLich]

If you remove raids entirely there won't be a gap either, and removing LFR will mean that raids get less exposure and will end up not being worth making any more, hence no more raids.

There is no "remove LFR" without "kill all raiding in a slow and painful way".

I wouldn't say so, LFR only came a year ago and Wow has had raids since the start. I do think LFR does kill the game on some level, some people play the game for a challenge and some literally play it to get easy epics, LFR fills that niche and a few others (such as for people that literally only have an hour or so a week to play). In the process, I think these people end up getting pretty bored though (hence threads like this one), when in reality, blizz should release quality content for even the most casual players instead of trying to lure them into raids that they likely won't end up enjoying much. Gear from challenge modes is a step in the right direction, heroic scenarios is even a better step.

[Deleted]

I hope people read Firefly's long post, it was a really good read with many good points and common sense.

[Deleted]

I hope people read Firefly's long post, it was a really good read with many good points and common sense.

Sadly I believe we got to many donkeys in this thread for common sense to make any impression.

[Deleted]

Sadly I believe we got to many donkeys in this thread for common sense to make any impression.

The concentrated enjoyment of a few doesn't make up for the lack of enjoyment of many.

Or, another way. People can't have fun in raids they don't get to go to.

Rest of your post was nonsense that told me you never played vanilla or TBC.

[Deleted]

See Trollface, I was correct

The concentrated enjoyment of a few doesn't make up for the lack of enjoyment of many.

Or, another way. People can't have fun in raids they don't get to go to.

Rest of your post was nonsense that told me you never played vanilla or TBC.

Every single post you made tells me you never played vanilla, tbc or wrath.

[Deleted]

See Trollface, I was correct

...about precisely fuck all.

Infracted; Don't spam. (Sonnillon)

[RickJamesLich]

See Trollface, I was correct



Every single post you made tells me you never played vanilla, tbc or wrath.

Yah, I'm starting to wonder if some of the people saying the "easy mode is a good idea" even remember their own arguments. They are basically saying that LFR is easy and extremely boring, yet they want an extremely easy version of the raids on 10 man.... naturally you'd be thinking "well wouldn't that be boring as well?" Beyond that the other arguments are "I want a more social raid", these people don't realize you can just bring friends to your LFR or use vent if you really want to. There's no logical argument at this point really for the easy mode raids, this thread is just beating a dead horse.

[Deleted]

...about precisely fuck all.

I would like to know what part of my post was "nonsense" then. I came with reason, logical conclusions and gameplay experience of previous expansions to counterargument some of the statements in this thread. You seem to be unsure of how argumentation works or you are just acting the way you are acting right now because you understand you are beaten.

If you believe my theories and arguments to be wrong. Come with your own logic that is superior to mine, disprove me. The burden is on you to show you are correct, not me. At the moment you are just acting like a child that lost an argument.

So far all you have been doing is coming with the same statement over and over again. Yet when someone comes and questions your statement, to which you have 0 reasoning to back up and no real logic behind, with reasoning and logic. Your reply is either "No!" or you completely ignore it.

Normal discussions go like.

Argument -> Counterargument -> counterargument -> repeat until conclusion / agreement
not
Argument-> Counterargument -> No!

The ball is in your park not mine. If you choose not to reply, and that means in form of argumentation about the subject, not personal bashing. I think it is safe to assume that you lost this argumentation as your argument falls short in both logic and reasoning.

If you choose to reply with manner and reasoning, which I hope you do, I will be happy to reply back to you. Until then, I will not reply to any more of your non-sense posts.

[Deleted]

Yah, I'm starting to wonder if some of the people saying the "easy mode is a good idea" even remember their own arguments. They are basically saying that LFR is easy and extremely boring, yet they want an extremely easy version of the raids on 10 man.... naturally you'd be thinking "well wouldn't that be boring as well?" Beyond that the other arguments are "I want a more social raid", these people don't realize you can just bring friends to your LFR or use vent if you really want to. There's no logical argument at this point really for the easy mode raids, this thread is just beating a dead horse.

>.<

At no point am I am outling what I would personally prefer in the game.

if wow was designed for me, it would be a month long /played time before you got to max level, followed by magisters terrace level 5 mans and 10 man raids a la ICC. 25 mans would all be shelved and pvp would be removed.

but....

This isn't a debate on "what MMO forum poster x wants for his own amusement." It's a debate about what should happen based on the data we have available + blizzard comments around the OP. For fucks sake.

How the fuck you kill anything in wow when you apparently can't even fucking read I have no idea.

[isadorr]

I think some on here don't want to look at data objectively because it means they have to change their tiny little minds.

lol

How is my mind tiny when you cant put enough brain cells together to clear normal mode? The clearing we did months ago. Yes, you heard it from lol dk first, Wow is hard.

[Deleted]

How is my mind tiny when you cant put enough brain cells together to clear normal mode? The clearing we did months ago. Yes, you heard it from lol dk first, Wow is hard.

Ok your mind is tiny and yours is even smaller. Grats, we are both idiots.

How about you actually talk about the OP now, instead of trying on this tedious strawman ad hominem bullshit that gets us nowhere?

[Deleted]

Oh the irony. You are the one ignoring everyone actually talking about the OP, and whoever disagrees with you, since you have no argumentation abilities, you instead attempt to attack them as persons or just completely ignore what they say.

You have not made one well written post that made any sense in the last three pages. ( not claiming you did before that either, didnt bother to check )

Lets make a compilation of the quality of your posts on the last few pages.

Why shouldn't they?
RL doesn't work that way, for a start, and wow is not a morality play either.
People pay for fun. Why deny them it?

0 reasoning. Replying to a question with another question and no response.

I think you want this to be about me because you can't answer any of the points.

Just ironic since you cant respond to anyone elses points.

9/12 is very good, much much better than average. It's not my fault you can't look at data objectively. lol

Looking at where the raiding population is at, it is very good. It's not world beating but it's much better than average.

Again, not my fault you can't look at data objectively!

Check the data. it proves me right, prioves you wrong. Get over it.

Again 0 logic. Denying other peoples logic with saying "check the data", when in reality you do not even understand the data yourself. You are acting like a pigeon playing chess.

I think some on here don't want to look at data objectively because it means they have to change their tiny little minds.

lol

Continue with 0 reasoning or 0 logic behind your claims. Saying someone else have a "tiny mind" when you cant even form a simple sentence summarizing your own opinion.

Never said it was. It's simply a fact that my guild does better than average.

If you like it, don't like it, care, don't care - it doesn't matter. That's what facts are like. They don't care about you, they just are.

More

Didn't say that, either.
All I said was that my guild is doing better than average.
And it is. Suck it up. [

It isn't.

0 arguments that holds any water.

Didn't say any of this either, and 9to be plain) not bothered either.

Still better than average. Facts remain.

What facts? You used the same repetetive 'fact' over and over again that got disproved by others, which you of course ignored.

My argument doesn't have anything to do with me or my guild.
It remains. It would remain if I stopped playing.
now, if you are quite done trying to dismiss the argument via ad hominem, please thrill me with your intelligence and acumen on the actual debate at hand.
if you can, of course.

Look in a mirror.

I dunno I'm just looking at the numbers. i.e. raid participation has dropped off a cliff.

You look at the numbers without understanding them or using them properly.

Yes, the bit where I said I wasn't arsed. 9/12 is better than average. You want to redefine average using all kinds of stuff that means 9/12 isn't average any longer.

I don't care, didn't do that and it's not relevent anyway. 9/12 is better than average. It just is. Why it is better than average i didn't go itno and don't care about.

now, back to the actual debate at hand - how about you engage in it rather than wander off up your own bottom?

Currently (according to data and blizzard) there is a gap between LFR and normal mode. What do you propose to fix it?

Again dismissing other peoples reasoning with 0 reasoning of your own.

+ Are you suprised that normal mode is harder than LFR? Also we others have done several propositions how to "fix" the problem (LFR).

The concentrated enjoyment of a few doesn't make up for the lack of enjoyment of many.
Or, another way. People can't have fun in raids they don't get to go to.
Rest of your post was nonsense that told me you never played vanilla or TBC.

Not sure how you can measure peoples enjoyments, and people are obviously getting to do raids, since people are doing raids. Again, a huge post counter argumenting pretty much your entire standpoint, to which you reply "nonsense" instead of argumenting for your own cause, since you are obviously incapable of doing so.

...about precisely fuck all.

Another well written and well formulated post by you.

How the fuck you kill anything in wow when you apparently can't even fucking read I have no idea.

Dunno, made me smile.

Ok your mind is tiny and yours is even smaller. Grats, we are both idiots.

How about you actually talk about the OP now, instead of trying on this tedious strawman ad hominem bullshit that gets us nowhere?

Great post!


As said, the ball is in your ballpark in the discussion actually related to the OP. You have contributed nothing to it in a couple of pages. Maybe time to do so or leave the thread?

[Deleted]

As said, the ball is in your ballpark in the discussion actually related to the OP. You have contributed nothing to it in a couple of pages. Maybe time to do so or leave the thread?

You are correct, I have been distracted by fools. Admittedly they tried to get around what i was saying by attacking me rather than what I was saying, but it was less than smart to even notice they were doing it. Never raise it again.

back to the issue at hand - LFR (which will carry on) and normals (which will carry on) have a gap between them.

LFR is too easy, normals are too hard. How do we bridge the gap?

I propose nerfing normals until 50% of those who enter them can complete them before the tier is over.