Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

[khalltusk]

Your last sentence makes no sense. Also the tightness of tuning to me is a side issue, Cata continued with the WotLK model. Just because it was more tightly tuned for a while does not mean it went back to the TBC model.



I've disproven the claim the LFR/LFD must be kept in the game, which is often made.



Fine, I simply disagree. What you and other LFR players are doing is not "raiding" in the sense that I understand raiding. It's more a mechanism to "see the content" without actually having to raid to do so.



Which people? Can you name some? I'm not "super cool hardcore", but personally I'm fine with Blizzard setting aside a small budget to make TBC style progression content. It might bring me back to the game if it's interesting enough. The current WoW does not attract me in any way as a casual nor as a "hardcore".

To spell it out for you. LFR came out after CATA had already lost subs. From wraths all time high to cata losing subs LFR was not involved. Only when DS came out and LFR with it did the bleed slow/stop. Its difficult to say the game is more popular with out LFR as we have no realistic idea on how it would have impacted the game back say in TBC etc.

You have not disproven anything (If you have let me know where its posted and I can go look). LFR has allowed _MORE_ people to see raiding content then ever before. How this positively or negatively impacts normal/heroic raiding and sub loss is a subjective matter and an issue I think needs a good look at.

Yeh its ok to Disagree here i've said it before a fair few times. Some will hate LFR others will love it. For me I quite enjoy it but do want a bit more of a challenge and hopefully flex will give me that but still allow me to play with my friends, these friends were the guys I originally joined up with in Vanilla who were casual back in the day. My brother being among them and honestly most are ok but they are certainly not that brilliant when it comes to raiding. The guys I raided with in Vanilla/TBC/Wrath and cata were a different bunch who I met in game but sadly they no longer play.

As for the last part there are plenty of people on this forum I have seen whos attitude is among those. Yours is border line to be honest as you want the TBC progression model back and after doing that hardcore back in the day I would dread having to do that again. But that's not that much of an issue as much as I loathed attunements from a raid leader perspective I did enjoy doing them on my characters. It is one thing I hope they bring back (as optional and gives you some sort of cool reward for doing the Attunement chain).

The Wrath model of raiding was probably among the best if you look at ulduar. Having 10 n/h being easier than 25 n/h was great and I really enjoyed that I could do the much harder content in our guild 25man group and the 10man mode we did with guild groups but it was way more casual and a lot of fun still. That said I enjoyed raiding in Vanilla but I would not go back to that as times change.

[DeadmanWalking]

The thing is, that LFR is preventing (new) people from getting to know what real rading means: being in TS with other people, overcoming challenges, coordinat your actions, having impact on the success.

LFR provides none of these, just the rewards in epics and kills.

But those are the things that engage you in the raiding content in the first place, not the kills and epics. If you taste real raiding, you will stick to it for longer then if you just experience the content via LFR.

Your theory is incorrect in nature. Are there people who are satified with what they get in LFR? Yes. But there are also people who have never raided before that decide they liked the taste of raiding they got in LFR and then pursue a Raid guild with gear that makes them capable of having an impact on success rather than having to be carried to the loot.

I've done it myself (because of LFR I joined a Raiding group to get the real challenge), I've had friends try LFR and decide they liked it and joined my raiding guild. I have even had friends who hated the LFR environment and burned out on LFR come back to the game specifically to raid in our guild and they have enjoyed it more because they are among friends and not 24 asshats.

I can gaurantee you that there are people in raiding guilds today that would not of played past heroic dungeons and quit to play something else had LFR not existed.

If you are mad at LFR for giving those who don't want to raid because they can get the experiences + crappy versions of the loot then I don't understand why you are mad at something that gives that player exactly what they are looking for, less challenge and crappy versions of the loot. Obviously LFR is suiting their needs, they must not of really enjoyed the raiding community to begind with.

You need to step back and realize that not everyone plays the way you do and certainly you don't represent all players. Your anti-LFR diatribe makes a lot of sense to you because it supports your world view but it does not represent everyone.

LFR can give a taste of raiding leading players to raiding guilds or it can pull people away from raiding guilds for easier fights and crappy gear since thats obviously what those players want, an alternative to raiding guilds. LFR=Working as intended.

[Ronduwil]

It is true. If everything can be achieved/unlocked by someone who plays 2 hours a week, then there is no motivation for the guy who plays 20 hours a week to continue at that pace.

Have you ever considered that maybe the guy who plays 20 hours a week could find better uses for his time? I agree that 2 hours a week is extremely low, but really 10 hours a week is more than enough time to devote to a game. Is it even responsible for a game company to encourage excessive gaming? It's funny how Blizzard includes tips like, "Bring your friends to Azeroth, but don't forget to go outside Azeroth with them as well." How much time are you going to spend with them outside the game when you're already in there with them for 20 hours a week? When are you going to sleep, bathe, do general household maintenance, go to your job and/or school, and/or raise your children?

Players keep demanding a reward system in this game as if it were a job, but it's not a job! You're not contributing anything to anyone when you spend 20 hours in the game! You're not contributing to society, and you're not even contributing to Blizzard. In fact, you're a far greater drain on their resources than the average player! If you want a reward you have to engage in an activity that will entice others to reward you. Get a job where you produce something for your employer. Then they will show their appreciation for your efforts by rewarding you. Perform some community service. Then when others see the contributions you've made they'll appreciate them and give you a reward. This expectation that you should be encouraged and rewarded for devoting most of your day to leisure activities is absolutely ridiculous.

[LeperHerring]

To spell it out for you. LFR came out after CATA had already lost subs. From wraths all time high to cata losing subs LFR was not involved. Only when DS came out and LFR with it did the bleed slow/stop. Its difficult to say the game is more popular with out LFR as we have no realistic idea on how it would have impacted the game back say in TBC etc.

And that is all completely irrelevant. It's very easy to say the game was more popular without LFR, just look at the numbers published by Blizzard. You keep thinking that I'm arguing that LFR caused many of the sub losses, and while I might think that it's true to a large extent, I'm not arguing that here. I'm simply saying that there is no evidence to back a claim that "LFR must be kept in the game".

You have not disproven anything (If you have let me know where its posted and I can go look). LFR has allowed _MORE_ people to see raiding content then ever before. How this positively or negatively impacts normal/heroic raiding and sub loss is a subjective matter and an issue I think needs a good look at.

I disproved just a few posts ago, just go back in this thread. LFR allowing people to see more content is irrelevant, what's relevant that there was a time before LFR when subs were higher, and then there is the time after LFR when the subs have been falling. Therefore, LFR is not a necessary factor for achieving popularity or success.

Also, if you want to play the "look for correlations" game. Then you might notice that increase in accessibility strongly and consistently correlates with drop in sub numbers. Why don't you chew on that for a while.

The Wrath model of raiding was probably among the best if you look at ulduar. Having 10 n/h being easier than 25 n/h was great and I really enjoyed that I could do the much harder content in our guild 25man group and the 10man mode we did with guild groups but it was way more casual and a lot of fun still. That said I enjoyed raiding in Vanilla but I would not go back to that as times change.

I disagree. Wrath stagnated the sub growth and began the fall (most of Wrath numbers were lower than TBC end numbers, only briefly peaking above them), so it's hard to argue that what they did in Wrath was somehow amazingly good from a larger perspective. Personally I hated the 10/25/normal/heroic split. It, along with gear resets in every patch, is what killed progression raiding for me.

[Aùssa02]

Here's a book, and you can't read the last chapter unless you've read all before it.

The general WoW community wants cliff notes, and then wonders why there's nothing compelling them to stay subscribed. *shrug*

QFT, Times a thousand. If just people would understand that you get what you "deserve" and if you raid on a weekly basis you "deserve" to see the end bosses, and if you don't raid you don't deserve to see the end bosses.

I see nothing illogical in rewarding the people "working" hard with something exclusive - About 50% of the population didn't care about raiding end-game content back then either, the last 49% had enough fun raiding "old" (current because you couldn't outgear in the way you've been able to since WoTLK/Cata.) content.

This is coming straight from someone who was in the supposedly 1% that saw Illidan drop, truth is - way more than 1% saw him fall. Sunwell was a bit of a different story, that was a bit over the top in being exclusive I have to admit.

Still, if you put in the effort you got rewarded - That is almost entirely out of the game now.

Also add to all that, that you couldn't just "skip" entire raid tiers with easy catch-up mechanics if you were behind (at least not untill Sunwell actually hit). You needed to make a natural gearing up progress and got to see ALL content of the expansion during that progress.

[Osmeric]

It is true. If everything can be achieved/unlocked by someone who plays 2 hours a week, then there is no motivation for the guy who plays 20 hours a week to continue at that pace.

I hope you realize that even if you restrict yourself to LFR, playing 2 hours a week is going to leave you way behind. I doubt it's possible to valor cap in 2 hours/week.

[saucywench]

So, your problem is that other people aren't like you, and that your personal preferences define what the game should be?

It's a shame for you, but like your opinion, that's feeling is entirely subjective.

^^ This exactly.

If exclusive content is offered and only a select few can access the content then don't use casual player base sub fees, to finance it. Those players that want exclusive content should pay higher monthly fees to unlock it.

[LeperHerring]

If you are mad at LFR for giving those who don't want to raid because they can get the experiences + crappy versions of the loot then I don't understand why you are mad at something that gives that player exactly what they are looking for, less challenge and crappy versions of the loot.

The problem isn't LFR, the problem is that Blizzard is trying to use the same content for everything, making the raiding experience much worse (especially for progression raiders). I have zero problem with Blizzard putting in 100 LFR bosses every patch, just give me some other content where I can do TBC style progression content.

The problem is that the self titled "casuals" (who are often in reality "bads" rather than "casuals") are not happy that there's content for other play styles than theirs. These are people who cannot be happy even if the game has more content for them than they could every consume, as long as someone else is doing content that they're not good enough or dedicated enough to get into.

[Osmeric]

I disproved just a few posts ago, just go back in this thread. LFR allowing people to see more content is irrelevant, what's relevant that there was a time before LFR when subs were higher, and then there is the time after LFR when the subs have been falling. Therefore, LFR is not a necessary factor for achieving popularity or success.

But this proves nothing. You're engaging in the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (that is, confusing correlation with causation). In practice, to have confidence in that kind of non-deductive inference, you need to bring in additional evidence that this particular correlation is relevant. But the additional evidence is not really supporting your claim, as many of us have pointed out.

[Deleted]

Your theory is incorrect in nature. Are there people who are satified with what they get in LFR? Yes. But there are also people who have never raided before that decide they liked the taste of raiding they got in LFR and then pursue a Raid guild with gear that makes them capable of having an impact on success rather than having to be carried to the loot.

I've done it myself (because of LFR I joined a Raiding group to get the real challenge), I've had friends try LFR and decide they liked it and joined my raiding guild. I have even had friends who hated the LFR environment and burned out on LFR come back to the game specifically to raid in our guild and they have enjoyed it more because they are among friends and not 24 asshats.

I can gaurantee you that there are people in raiding guilds today that would not of played past heroic dungeons and quit to play something else had LFR not existed.

If you are mad at LFR for giving those who don't want to raid because they can get the experiences + crappy versions of the loot then I don't understand why you are mad at something that gives that player exactly what they are looking for, less challenge and crappy versions of the loot. Obviously LFR is suiting their needs, they must not of really enjoyed the raiding community to begind with.

You need to step back and realize that not everyone plays the way you do and certainly you don't represent all players. Your anti-LFR diatribe makes a lot of sense to you because it supports your world view but it does not represent everyone.

LFR can give a taste of raiding leading players to raiding guilds or it can pull people away from raiding guilds for easier fights and crappy gear since thats obviously what those players want, an alternative to raiding guilds. LFR=Working as intended.

I'm happy for you and your friends that you made your way. But please don't make the mistake to think that the majority of other new players are doing the same as you guys did.

My oppinion stands that LFR gives you a wrong taste of raiding, a boring one, not an engaging one and I think a lot more players don't make the jump to a guild of normal raiders.

[khalltusk]

And that is all completely irrelevant. It's very easy to say the game was more popular without LFR, just look at the numbers published by Blizzard. You keep thinking that I'm arguing that LFR caused many of the sub losses, and while I might think that it's true to a large extent, I'm not arguing that here. I'm simply saying that there is no evidence to back a claim that "LFR must be kept in the game".



I disproved just a few posts ago, just go back in this thread. LFR allowing people to see more content is irrelevant, what's relevant that there was a time before LFR when subs were higher, and then there is the time after LFR when the subs have been falling. Therefore, LFR is not a necessary factor for achieving popularity or success.

Also, if you want to play the "look for correlations" game. Then you might notice that increase in accessibility strongly and consistently correlates with drop in sub numbers. Why don't you chew on that for a while.



I disagree. Wrath stagnated the sub growth and began the fall (most of Wrath numbers were lower than TBC end numbers, only briefly peaking above them), so it's hard to argue that what they did in Wrath was somehow amazingly good from a larger perspective. Personally I hated the 10/25/normal/heroic split. It, along with gear resets in every patch, is what killed progression raiding for me.

Ah this old chestnut. Ok Firstly The amount of raiders overall has been low very low compared to the amount of players in the game total. Blizzard has been on record stating most people spent their time just leveling characters previously. Now the focus is on getting people to Max level and thus raiding or high end content.

Prior to LFR even with wraths ease of raiding the numbers were still quite low. It was higher than TBC but still low. LFR has seen more people "raid" than ever before. Thus it is needed as these people would _NEVER_ have seen this content otherwise.

Now of course you have a point on the sub numbers dropping but there are many factors for it and quite frankly its going to be a large combination of factors causing the drops not just LFR (which I think is a cause of some drops due to people burning through the content). Thing is the game changes as the Market changes. Saying LFR is not needed with nothing more than saying "they had more numbers back then" is nonsense. With out more data to back up these claims they are nothing more than that.

Also the correlations game is sheer BS. Look at cata the ease of accessing content was not there. The difficulty of the raids was a direct road block to people trying to clear them. Same for LFD heroics. (I really liked their difficulty) They lost a lot of subs directly because the content was too hard and thus not accessable to the population. Sure there were no attunements but it was not really needed as a barrier to raiding when the base line difficulty in raids was a lot higher than previous.


If you can actually come up with some real evidence as to why LFR is not needed go ahead. As a player In vanilla I looked at someone in raid gear and went whats this raiding lark and got into it from there. You must remember the % of players raiding was so tiny in comparison that would be safe to assume the ones not raiding must have been playing the game for reasons OTHER than raiding. Why is that do you think?

[Aùssa02]

I'm happy for you and your friends that you made your way. But please don't make the mistake to think that the majority of other new players are doing the same as you guys did.

My oppinion stands that LFR gives you a wrong taste of raiding, a boring one, not an engaging one and I think a lot more players don't make the jump to a guild of normal raiders.

Matter of fact is that so long as you have people in your group (namely tanks, a few dps and 1-2 healers) that know how the encounters work, you get carried and LFR is far easier than HC's.

That!
Saddens me.

[Lord Blackmore]

I guess this is another classic "Jaylock" thread.

[LeperHerring]

But this proves nothing. You're engaging in the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (that is, confusing correlation with causation). In practice, to have confidence in that kind of non-deductive inference, you need to bring in additional evidence that this particular correlation is relevant. But the additional evidence is not really supporting your claim, as many of us have pointed out.

I'm explicitly not doing that. Because I know this forum is full of clueless posters who will drone "correlation does not imply causation" instead of having any actual arguments of their own. Read what I wrote again, and this time actually try to understand it.

---------- Post added 2013-06-19 at 04:04 PM ----------

Ah this old chestnut. Ok Firstly The amount of raiders overall has been low very low compared to the amount of players in the game total. Blizzard has been on record stating most people spent their time just leveling characters previously. Now the focus is on getting people to Max level and thus raiding or high end content.

Prior to LFR even with wraths ease of raiding the numbers were still quite low. It was higher than TBC but still low. LFR has seen more people "raid" than ever before. Thus it is needed as these people would _NEVER_ have seen this content otherwise.

I don't know who you are replying to since this has no relevance at all to my point.

Saying LFR is not needed with nothing more than saying "they had more numbers back then" is nonsense. With out more data to back up these claims they are nothing more than that.

It's a very straightforward existence proof following directly from data. Arguing against it is like saying "1 + 1 = 2 is nonsense". The game was wildly popular without LFR in the game, therefore LFR is not required to be wildly popular. It's as simple as it gets. You can argue about changing markets and whatever, but you have zero backing, just empty conjecture while I have an actual irrefutable proof.

[Ronduwil]

Here's a book, and you can't read the last chapter unless you've read all before it.

The general WoW community wants cliff notes, and then wonders why there's nothing compelling them to stay subscribed. *shrug*

Except this book is special. Each reader only gets part of each sentence so you have to combine words with 9-24 other readers in order to get to read the book. Consider how this would go down if the system were to work in the manner you propose. If you get to the last chapter with 9 other people and one of them leaves you now have to wait for one other to catch up to in order to finish the book. However, they can't read by themselves either so now you have to start reading and rereading the book from the beginning again to catch that other reader up. This is why the book analogy doesn't fit very well with a multi-player game. It's not simple or practical to force everyone to go through all the content in order to see the end of the game. When you do that you will wind up with the same situation you had in BC, where only 1% of the population even got to see the final raids.

[khalltusk]

I'm explicitly not doing that. Because I know this forum is full of clueless posters who will drone "correlation does not imply causation" instead of having any actual arguments of their own. Read what I wrote again, and this time actually try to understand it.

---------- Post added 2013-06-19 at 04:04 PM ----------



I don't know who you are replying to since this has no relevance at all to my point.



It's a very straightforward existence proof following directly from data. Arguing against it is like saying "1 + 1 = 2 is nonsense". The game was wildly popular without LFR in the game, therefore LFR is not required to be wildly popular. It's as simple as it gets. You can argue about changing markets and whatever, but you have zero backing, just empty conjecture while I have an actual irrefutable proof.

I was replying to you but you fail to understand it.

You argue over an assumption. I am simply saying why did these players play back then when they were not raiding. What were they mainly doing. I even answered it for you. Most people were leveling. Now leveling is no longer the focus for these players they want to do the end game content. Thus LFR is needed. That means your argument is falling flat on its face. Blizzard stated so much them selves that players wanted to spend less time leveling and want access to the end game content.

For good or bad thats why LFR is needed. The fact more people raid in LFR than have ever raided previously is further proof of this. If you can aknowledge that then I thank you for reading. This does not mean that LFR is the best form of raiding ever.

Thats all I will mention on it until you can come up with some actual data rather than an assumption.

[Deleted]

Thats why I think LFR will see changes to improve it and other raid modes hopefully will bring some more incentives to get people into going up to that level.

I dont see how LFR in its current state can even be compared to raiding.... theyre worlds apart.

For reasons stated in this thread.

The jump from LFR to normal raiding is collosal for new players, those players who are totally new to Wow. The effort vs reward dilemma for those who have completed LFR is just not worth it. Unless ofc those players r convinced by existing players to do so...

LFR should either be simplified even more and packaged as a 'see the contnent tool' or it should be uptuned in difficulty to deserve to be labelled as raiding.

[DeadmanWalking]

I'm happy for you and your friends that you made your way. But please don't make the mistake to think that the majority of other new players are doing the same as you guys did.

My oppinion stands that LFR gives you a wrong taste of raiding, a boring one, not an engaging one and I think a lot more players don't make the jump to a guild of normal raiders.

So let me get this straight, you want to get rid of LFR because there are people satisfied with less challenge and crappy versions of gear /and/ you want these people in your raid group!? This is like saying there are people who like going to prison because its 3 square meals a day and a roof over your head and you want a law that forces them to get a job and live in a house on your street as your next door neighbor.

If they are satisfied with it there is a reason why.

And as for seperate content for LFR and Raiders, I hope you like content drops once a year as opposed to once every 2-4 months. This entire ideal has no basis in a reality where it takes time and resources to develop content.

Believe me, you don't want those people who choose the short road to crappy gear in your raiding guilds.

Also just because they are casuals don't mean they are baddies, most of them were plowing dungeons before you could type but grew up and got lives/jobs/families and dont have the time to commit to a video game. They should be able to experience the game in any manner they wish without having to pass you as gatekeeper to content.

LFR is here to stay because it fulfills many purposes.

[khalltusk]

I dont see how LFR in its current state can even be compared to raiding.... theyre worlds apart.

For reasons stated in this thread.

The jump from LFR to normal raiding is collosal for new players, those players who are totally new to Wow. The effort vs reward dilemma for those who have completed LFR is just not worth it. Unless ofc those players r convinced by existing players to do so...

LFR should either be simplified even more and packaged as a 'see the contnent tool' or it should be uptuned in difficulty to deserve to be labelled as raiding.

I agree it is rather easy. That and how to make the jump to guild raiding. I think Flex is part of the solution. Not sure what other things they can do but no doubt blizzard would do something.

It is still raiding though, but just a watered down difficulty. I personally have friends who do LFR and are looking forward to flex as it would give them a step up in difficulty but not too brutal a jump. But regardless I dont think there is an easy answer as much like flying mounts the Genie is out of the bottle so its hard to remove LFR.

[Deleted]

So let me get this straight, you want to get rid of LFR because there are people satisfied with less challenge and crappy versions of gear /and/ you want these people in your raid group!? This is like saying there are people who like going to prison because its 3 square meals a day and a roof over your head and you want a law that forces them to get a job and live in a house on your street as your next door neighbor.

If they are satisfied with it there is a reason why.

And as for seperate content for LFR and Raiders, I hope you like content drops once a year as opposed to once every 2-4 months. This entire ideal has no basis in a reality where it takes time and resources to develop content.

Believe me, you don't want those people who choose the short road to crappy gear in your raiding guilds.

Also just because they are casuals don't mean they are baddies, most of them were plowing dungeons before you could type but grew up and got lives/jobs/families and dont have the time to commit to a video game. They should be able to experience the game in any manner they wish without having to pass you as gatekeeper to content.

LFR is here to stay because it fulfills many purposes.

You are reading way too many wrong things into my postings and for the sole purpose to repeat your talking points. Stick to your opinion and good luck with it.