How not to fix LFR - Make LFR Attractive.

[praseodymium]

When queuing for LFR, players should be able to select an "I'm not here for loot" option, which would have a bunch of sub-categories. Selecting this option would allow you, once per week per LFR wing, to gain reputation, gold, bonus valor, consumables, or other assorted benefits that you could select before queuing.

This is possibly the best idea I've heard yet.

Loot Specialization:
"Vanity", "Cosmetic", or "Old Stuff" - would drop difficult-to-obtain items specific to your character (warrior has a chance to get Naxx warrior tier, very low chance of glaives etc).

"Consumables" - drops flasks, feasts etc

"Crafting Mats" - drops hides, trillium, golden lotus

"Mounts" - self-explanatory

"Pets" - ditto

"Gold" - a substantial amount, not piddly 30g

"Reputation" - rep (maybe a BoA use item) with any faction you don't have at exalted

Edit: Making this a loot spec option rather than buffing the role-specific bags would attract good DPS as well as tanks/heals, but it doesn't really solve the problem of AFKers. Maybe tie the chance of getting a drop to how well you performed? Though that does open up abuse possibilities.

Edit2: The bonus valor idea might work, but I don't think granting valor above the 1K cap is a good idea because then normal raiders are forced to use it to upgrade their gear.

[Deleted]

Yeah you'd love to get spoonfed everything without putting any effort to it wouldnt you? Same tired flawed arguments as usual I see.

No, I quite like challenges.

Ypu've made the mistake of thinking that what I personally enjoy is what I suggest because I know it will work.

A sollution

to make people play better would have to come from Blizzard to implement tutorials in-game, since not everyone who plays knows about Icy-Veins Noxxic or even MMO-C.

Sure. I agree completely. If blizzard showed people how to play then you would have a point.

They don't show people how to play, so you don't have a point.

What you have is a wish. You wish people would rise to the occasion and beat those challenges. They don't, but you wish for it.

But I have an idea. Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.

[xalenthas]

This is possibly the best idea I've heard yet.

Loot Specialization:
"Vanity", "Cosmetic", or "Old Stuff" - would drop difficult-to-obtain items specific to your character (warrior has a chance to get Naxx warrior tier, very low chance of glaives etc).

"Consumables" - drops flasks, feasts etc

"Crafting Mats" - drops hides, trillium, golden lotus

"Mounts" - self-explanatory

"Pets" - ditto

Except, in the minds of many this will make it once again mandatory for them to run ...

[Deleted]

You forgot the option "None of the above".

This.

All these poll options are absurd.

[xalenthas]

...

But I have an idea. Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.

lol, and yet so true

[Raelbo]

We have LFR because the playerbase in general doesn't actually want to raid. Blizzard has responded to this player apathy towards raiding by (effectively) removing all other content from endgame, because for some reason blizzard seems to be willing to do anything to keep raiding going.

This is a bit of an odd argument. While I think I understand what you mean, your way of presenting it doesn't really help much.

The reality is that people want to raid, but they don't want to *raid*, where the definition of raid and *raid* are subtly different.

Raiding, by definition, is actually simply about doing large scale encounters in large groups of interdependent characters. Traditionally *raiding* has been coupled with challenging content and as such has an inherent requirement to join an organised group and adhere to their schedule and minimum gear/skill requirement in order to participate.

Now, while it is quite natural that a lot of people want to do challenging content, and are prepared and able to put in the effort and commitment necessary to succeed at it, this is not true of everyone.

Some people are unable to commit to a raiding schedule. Some are unable to spend enough time in the game to get the gear and skill necessary to defeat the bosses. Others may be able to do these things, they simply don't want to (and given that this is a game, ie made for having fun, this is absolutely ok). But that doesn't mean that they don't want to participate in large scale encounters involving many other players.


So, actually, no. The players actually don't want to not raid. The massive way in which LFR was embraced by millions of players since its inception is evidence thereof. This is why Blizzard made LFR. Because when it comes down to it, it would seem the majority of the playerbase does actually want to raid, just not within the constraints and requirements that the content originally mandated.

[Deleted]

Now, while it is quite natural that a lot of people want to do challenging content, and are prepared and able to put in the effort and commitment necessary to succeed at it, this is not true of everyone.
.

Replacing "a lot" with "almost no one" would be good start.

Players just want to advance their toons. If pet battles drop HC warforged stuff, pet battles would see an avalanche of newbies engaged in them.

The people (like myself) who quite like doing raids just to sort of do the raids is really, really small indeed. Those who want to both see the raids AND have their faces burned off by really hard content is even smaller.

LFR exists because blizzard wants (for whatever reason) to keep hardcore raiding alive, and LFR was the best way they could find to justify splunking such vast amounts of cash on it, given they have a CFO who can calculate money spent per subscriber involved and almost no fucker wants to go hardcore raiding.

[RickJamesLich]

Replacing "a lot" with "almost no one" would be good start.

Players just want to advance their toons. If pet battles drop HC warforged stuff, pet battles would see an avalanche of newbies engaged in them.

The people (like myself) who quite like doing raids just to sort of do the raids is really, really small indeed. Those who want to both see the raids AND have their faces burned off by really hard content is even smaller.

LFR exists because blizzard wants (for whatever reason) to keep hardcore raiding alive, and LFR was the best way they could find to justify splunking such vast amounts of cash on it, given they have a CFO who can calculate money spent per subscriber involved and almost no fucker wants to go hardcore raiding.

We have seen with LFR being implemented the opposite however, as far as getting subscribers though. Why is that? Nobody knows for sure, but I'm imagining the fact that the game is an MMO, and LFR has almost nothing in common with an MMO is possibly a good start.


As far as players not wanting to do "challenging content" but wanting to advance their toons, I don't think that statement really makes much sense lol.

[praseodymium]

Except, in the minds of many this will make it once again mandatory for them to run ...

But none of those options give you an advantage in raiding. I think that was the sticking point for most people. If it gives you an advantage in progression raids, that's a no-go.

But old vanity gear, mounts, and pets are designed to be a time sink to obtain, so why not have people sink time by helping out others?

[Deleted]

We have seen with LFR being implemented the opposite however, as far as getting subscribers though. Why is that? Nobody knows for sure, but I'm imagining the fact that the game is an MMO, and LFR has almost nothing in common with an MMO is possibly a good start.


As far as players not wanting to do "challenging content" but wanting to advance their toons, I don't think that statement really makes much sense lol.

Players want to advance their toon - i.e. get their toon more power. in the old days, this was baked in, because most players were level 40 and had another 20 (vanilla) or 30 (tbc) levels to go. More power was always there, all they had to do is level up. Which was easy, but time consuming.

That power through levelling system has been removed, because hardcore raiders QQ'd like beaten dogs about not being able to get raid ready alts. So now everyone is at endgame (and has been since the arse end of wotlk.) At endgame the only way to power up your toon is to get gear.

So, players want to get gear. They don't want to wipe 500 times on HC Endboss, they want to do something fairly easy and then get a bit of gear.

Yes, it's a terrible attitude, modern youth of today yadda yadda, but this is what people are like.

They want to advance their toons and not have to bleed out of their eyeballs to get it. That's all. Blizzard has restricted endgame down to basically LFR in order to justify their raid budget. And still no one gives a shit about raiding, bar the people who used to do it anyway.

[RickJamesLich]

Players want to advance their toon - i.e. get their toon more power. in the old days, this was baked in, because most players were level 40 and had another 20 (vanilla) or 30 (tbc) levels to go. More power was always there, all they had to do is level up. Which was easy, but time consuming.

That power through levelling system has been removed, because hardcore raiders QQ'd like beaten dogs about not being able to get raid ready alts. So now everyone is at endgame (and has been since the arse end of wotlk.) At endgame the only way to power up your toon is to get gear.

So, players want to get gear. They don't want to wipe 500 times on HC Endboss, they want to do something fairly easy and then get a bit of gear.

Yes, it's a terrible attitude, modern youth of today yadda yadda, but this is what people are like.

They want to advance their toons and not have to bleed out of their eyeballs to get it. That's all. Blizzard has restricted endgame down to basically LFR in order to justify their raid budget. And still no one gives a shit about raiding, bar the people who used to do it anyway.

The idea of "needing gear" but not doing anything but the same stuff you've already done is a bit dumb, I'm sure you'll agree. Now I'm not saying playign the game without raiding is pointless, but.... well maybe I am, but anyways My point was that your whole sentiment "nobody wants to challenge themselves" may be a little off. I see very few people that refer to easy content in the game as fun, even casuals. Think about it, how many times do you hear "this new LFR is awesome!" on these forums?


LFR as I'm sure you'd agree, is causing the game to lose players, which is odd because when the game didn't constantly re-hash easy mode versions of content, the subscriptions sky rocketed, which would indicate your thing about challenges is off.


I've never seen hard core raiders QQ about gearing up alts lol, in fact I think most people are saying the game hands out gear too easily at this point (epics are more common than greens or blues at this point). And I'm not sure that LFR is a good way to justify the budget, as I have mentioned before, the game has been losing subs since it's creation.

[Raelbo]

Replacing "a lot" with "almost no one" would be good start.

Why play with silly semantics? You miss the point while focusing on a choice of word. If 200 000 people died in a natural disaster (a conservative guess at the approximate number of people who have completed at least one normal/heroic boss in SoO) it would not be regarded as "almost no one". It may be small next to the total number of WoW subscribers but it was never my intent to convey otherwise, simply that there is a group of people who enjoy it.

Players just want to advance their toons. If pet battles drop HC warforged stuff, pet battles would see an avalanche of newbies engaged in them.

So why exactly do people want to advance their toons? I can't speak for everyone, but I want to advance my toon so that I can tackle and defeat more bosses. My ultimate objective is actually progressing through content. Gear is simply a means to that end. I care a lot more about mounts, titles, pets and achievements than I do about gear, but without the gear I won't be able to get those things.

The people (like myself) who quite like doing raids just to sort of do the raids is really, really small indeed. Those who want to both see the raids AND have their faces burned off by really hard content is even smaller.

My guild is currently a Flex guild, and we aren't even that progressed in it. Yet we all like challenging content. How can this be you ask? Well it's quite simple actually - challenging simply means difficult given your personal circumstances. Now if my guildies had infinite time to devote to WoW and challenging content, their level of gear and skill would quickly progress to the point where they would need heroic raid content to feel challenged.

LFR exists because blizzard wants (for whatever reason) to keep hardcore raiding alive, and LFR was the best way they could find to justify splunking such vast amounts of cash on it, given they have a CFO who can calculate money spent per subscriber involved and almost no fucker wants to go hardcore raiding.

While I won't say your theory is not without some merit, I seriously doubt that this is the only motivation for the existence of LFR. LFR, in and of itself is a worthwhile endeavour in that it keeps a significant number of people playing. The fact that it synergises well with heroic raiding is just smart business. Ultimately, if you stop to think about it, everything in WoW works that way. It all synergises with other content to create a nice continuum of content that will appeal to a broad spectrum of players.

[Deleted]

The idea of "needing gear" but not doing anything but the same stuff you've already done is a bit dumb, I'm sure you'll agree.

No, it's an RPG and getting gear to be better at stuff is the whole point of the game for 90% of people who play them.

Now I'm not saying playign the game without raiding is pointless, but.... well maybe I am, but anyways My point was that your whole sentiment "nobody wants to challenge themselves" may be a little off. I see very few people that refer to easy content in the game as fun, even casuals. Think about it, how many times do you hear "this new LFR is awesome!" on these forums?

You mean the same LFR they carry on doing because they want to level up their toon and this is their primary concern in the game?

LFR as I'm sure you'd agree, is causing the game to lose players, which is odd because when the game didn't constantly re-hash easy mode versions of content, the subscriptions sky rocketed, which would indicate your thing about challenges is off.

No, subs were way way up when levelling took weeks of playing time. When easy ways to power up your character were everywhere as long as you put a bit of time in. Most players through wows history haven't engaged in raids. They still wouldn't if there was something else they could do instead to gain more plsyer power.

I've never seen hard core raiders QQ about gearing up alts lol, in fact I think most people are saying the game hands out gear too easily at this point (epics are more common than greens or blues at this point). And I'm not sure that LFR is a good way to justify the budget, as I have mentioned before, the game has been losing subs since it's creation.

Can't have anything to do with raiding,really. Not enough people raided through the gams history to mke any difference to sub numbers. The entire hardcore raid community could vanish down a hole at midnight, and the sub numbers would barely flicker.

[Romanthony]

Receive Heroic items for doing LFR and Legendaries? What are you high. Personally, All i do is LFR, because personal reasons, but to receive These 2 things for doing LFR to me sounds extremely Stupid. in fact most the options are.
Now getting Random LFR items might be better, But why heroic/Normal gear or Legendaries, what would be the point in doing the normal raid then, if you have a random chance to get gear in LFR

[saucywench]

What lfr needs is a system that rewards good players - who execute their class abilities successfully well and who complete the raid - by bumping them to the front of all future queues. Asking for loot freebies or other incentives is just plain wrong.

[RickJamesLich]

No, it's an RPG and getting gear to be better at stuff is the whole point of the game for 90% of people who play them.


You mean the same LFR they carry on doing because they want to level up their toon and this is their primary concern in the game?



No, subs were way way up when levelling took weeks of playing time. When easy ways to power up your character were everywhere as long as you put a bit of time in. Most players through wows history haven't engaged in raids. They still wouldn't if there was something else they could do instead to gain more plsyer power.



Can't have anything to do with raiding,really. Not enough people raided through the gams history to mke any difference to sub numbers. The entire hardcore raid community could vanish down a hole at midnight, and the sub numbers would barely flicker.

Getting gear to do more challenging content is why most people, IMO do the game. Your point was that people are just getting gear and never going past easy mode stuff (like LFR). Keep in mind the game is an MMO, not just an RPG.


As for LFR, from what I've seen, the main people do it is just for gear. I haven't heard anyone say "I'd do LFR even if it didn't drop gear" ever lol. That doesn't mean a lot of players have fun with it, I see rage posts about LFR all the time.




And I don't think leveling up in BC was a *massive* undertaking, with vanilla it's more debatable but still, for as long as vanilla was out, if you were playing it for a few months, you could hit 60. As for LFR, ever since it was brought into the mix as end game content, the game loses players, that's the big point. I'm imagining it probably doesn't sound as engaging for people that are on their way to hitting max level, as opposed to that raids and other end game content were previously.



As for not enough people raiding to make a difference in sub numbers, it sounds like that's strictly your opinion lol. Of course, I am using strictly my opinion as well, but without raiding, why would anyone play after they hit max level? The game would suffer the same fate as WoW's competitors, which isn't a good thing.

[RoKPaNda]

Nothing. LFR is obviously very attractive as it's the most used type of "raiding." - Much like the whole "People with cosmetic helms are getting kicked!" thing, the idea that people have stopped running LFR is something that's falsely claimed here on these forums. People who run flex, people who run normals, are still running LFR. Why? I have no idea, but they are. So the people who "carry" are still there, and don't need any more incentive to be there.

[Yaney]

LFR doesn't deserve ANYTHING on that list..

This. It should be removed in favour of flex next expansion.

[PrairieChicken]

If LFR had better drop chance for better players then it will be better place

Why get better when you can get the same thing by afking?

[Masochist]

(Point is to get "Carriers" back)

not happening

i used to make quite a bit of money completing lfr on multiple characters. but i dont want to do a long ass legendary questline so i can be competitive when i play an alt. and players in LFR piss me off because they are so bad. i've spent all the money ive made from lfr in the first year of the expansion choosing not to play with them because it irritates me that i can do 300k dps in lfr but these people can't even pull close to 100k with an item level of 500, and my dps alone isn't enough.