To people whom want LFR removed: What endgame do you propose for the casual players?

[Deleted]

Remove LFR and make flex slightly easier. This would:

1) Allow even the bad "casuals" to get through it if they bother to find a group
2) Build server communities and get people interracting with each others again

Also make more challenging 5mans with slightly better rewards to make the progression curve smoother, kinda like the troll dungeons in 4.1 (during t11)

So ding max level > dungeons > HC dungeons > 'elite' dungeons > flex raid > normal > HC

[Deleted]

Which is also why I am confused by people trashing on normal raids, say they are forced into LFR, and say how much superior 5man is.
LFR, you press a button and wait for Q to pop. You click on accept, proceed to play in the instance.
LFD, you press a button and wait for Q to pop. You click on accept, proceed to play in the instance.
I understand some people prefer smaller groups the same way as some people prefer larger groups. What I don't get is why some people claim raids are unwanted and dungeons are better. Dungeons are essentially like "5man raids" and raids are essentially like "10/25man dungeons" to me. The 2 are pretty much the same thing inherently.

From the anecdotal evidence here on the forums, an average LFR run seems to have a longer queue time, a longer completion time and a higher failure rate compared to LFD. And the reward is more RNG in nature than LFD's fixed Valor allotment.
Furthermore, if you are a competent player you have a better chance of positively influencing the outcome of a 5 man dungeon run compared to a 25 man raid. That seems like it would make for a more fun and less frustrating experience.

[Gilian]

I want Blizzard to decide who is worthy to do content, not You. Frankly I already call your judgement of who is worthy into question. If you allow the playerbase to decide who gets to do content then you will just get the raiding guild dilemma all over again, only the elite get invited in and those who have not proven themselves get stuck in go no where groups or get to do nothing. You're all just going to have to learn to get along and do LFR togeather or choose to not do it.

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If LFR didn't work then people would not use it. It may have its flaws but its obviously a system that is working for the rest of us.

How do I decide who is worthy to do content? I would merely be trying to find players I would like to play with instead of being grouped up with players I don't want to play with.
And like I said everyone can start a group by pressing a button.

If LFR worked people wouldn't change to flex and you wouldn't have 1 hour queues on wednesdays and need 4 hours to clear a wing and that after several nerfs.

All I read is: we need good players to carry new players through it. And then you want to claim LFR is fine? Whatever. Enjoy the LFR nerfs.

[Glorious Leader]

Because raids are so complex now? Rofl.

Why is there so much fucking denial about this? Raiding today is becoming more like playing a game of starcraft even if it's just down to the the fact that I'm rocking 30+ key binds, 6+ button rotations, multiple proc watches and rppm trinkets, and bosses that offer far more for players to watch then simple hey move here when you get mark of doom above your head. Dude Hyjal was the lfr of raiding, you could literally afk through bosses.

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I'm certain that no one appointed you the arbiter of what an entire segment of people think, but if you didn't see very vocal forums about how tired people were of running the same dungeons all the time, you simply weren't pay attention.

No I was here and he's right. Few people complained about it. Once again it was a group of vocal whiners who wanted to take away epics from other people and a rich rewarding play style. Now i don't think the children whining about it in forums had anything to do with it at all, it was just a shitty business decision on the part of the developers that's lost them subscribers. "Streamlining" the production of content (raids) by shoving raid content down every bodies throat whether or not he or she likes it. I'm glad millions said fuck you to this.

I guess the same folks whining about doing the same 16 dungeons in wrath must be OVER FUCKING JOYED that they get to do the same shitty fucking raid on potentially 4 difficulties WITH LITTLE TO NO OTHER FUCKING CONTENT for 6+ months. Yep. That's a much better situation today alright. Running those same 16 dungeons was fucking A MILLION times better.

[khalltusk]

Why is there so much fucking denial about this? Raiding today is becoming more like playing a game of starcraft even if it's just down to the the fact that I'm rocking 30+ key binds, 6+ button rotations, multiple proc watches and rppm trinkets, and bosses that offer far more for players to watch then simple hey move here when you get mark of doom above your head. Dude Hyjal was the lfr of raiding, you could literally afk through bosses.

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No I was here and he's right. Few people complained about it. Once again it was a group of vocal whiners who wanted to take away epics from other people and a rich rewarding play style. Now i don't think the children whining about it in forums had anything to do with it at all, it was just a shitty business decision on the part of the developers that's lost them subscribers. "Streamlining" the production of content (raids) by shoving raid content down every bodies throat whether or not he or she likes it. I'm glad millions said fuck you to this.

I guess the same folks whining about doing the same 16 dungeons in wrath must be OVER FUCKING JOYED that they get to do the same shitty fucking raid on potentially 4 difficulties WITH LITTLE TO NO OTHER FUCKING CONTENT for 6+ months. Yep. That's a much better situation today alright. Running those same 16 dungeons was fucking A MILLION times better.

We need a combination of raid modes AND good dungeon content imo.

Give us 12 boss raids on a raid patch and 2 dungeons with 3/4 bosses each. With the increase in developers I think its a real possibility to do so.

That gives casual players a choice to do raid or dungeon content or both. I do disagree with you thinking its the same shitty raid, all of the raids this expansion have been fantastic imo. I know you hate raids and prefer dungeons and can agree the lack of dungeons this expansion has been tragic.

[Glorious Leader]

We need a combination of raid modes AND good dungeon content imo.

Give us 12 boss raids on a raid patch and 2 dungeons with 3/4 bosses each. With the increase in developers I think its a real possibility to do so.

That gives casual players a choice to do raid or dungeon content or both. I do disagree with you thinking its the same shitty raid, all of the raids this expansion have been fantastic imo. I know you hate raids and prefer dungeons and can agree the lack of dungeons this expansion has been tragic.

The claim was made that people got bored doing the same dungeons over and over again and whined about it. Well since the game has nothing or virtually nothing but raiding left at this point the same claim can and should be made about raids. The raids are shitty IMO but that's an argument for another day. I don't necesarilly hate raiding but I don't want it to be the main staple of content. I'd rather just do it on a weekend as a pug if I have the time which is basically what i did in ICC.

[Aleksej89]

WoW is business.
Blizzards top responsibility, as a company, is to make as much money as possible - one of the key factors to this is making sure your products are high quality and can accommodate a wide variety of people/players.

Asking for LFR to be removed is absolute nonsense - LFR is THE MOST PLAYED form/type of raiding at the moment.
LFR is more used than normal, it is more used than heroic, and it is definitely more used than flex.
Not to mention that a lot of LFR users are players who can only do LFR, and can't do any of the more demanding raid modes.

Asking from Blizzard to remove their most utilized end game PvE raiding mode (LFR) makes as much sense as asking a doctor to stop healing people and instead go fix an airplane engine...

LFR is here to stay - permanently. I don't fancy LFR, i rarely run LFR - but i completely understand why that super-easy mode of raiding is necessary for WoW to maintain high subscriber-base so they can afford high quality content.

[NicciNO]

My idea:

- Dungeons as we know them today, for leveling and initial max-level gear. Awards blue gear as is done today.
- Heroic dungeons, scaled up in difficulty from today, awards LFR level epics, levelrange 88-90 (awards nice xp for the people able to do them and/or provides a nice way for guildies to help eachother level the last bit). The alternative for people who consider themselves good players and who doesn't want to deal with the laidback LFRs. New Heroic dungeons should be released in line with new raids. Need not have normal mode counterparts (but could). Queuing to these should be like queuing for Heroic scenario/Flex is today.
- Looking for Raid, as we know them today, levelrange 90.
- Flex, as we know them today.
- Normal mode raids, increase the difficulty slightly from today. But decrease the itemlevel differences between normal mode raids a bit so slightly older content isnt invalidated as fast. Should be the endgame aim for casuals.
- Heroic raids, separate from normal mode raids (not the same raids). This should be the really difficult ones. Increase the difficulty some from todays heroics. Doesnt have to be as many or as large as the normal modes. Remove them from public test realms so everyone starts out the same. Should be the endgame aim for hardcores. Substitute for "bonus" bosses on todays heroic mode.

Should be plenty of content for everyone like this, with alternative gearing paths:
Casuals: dungeons -> LFR -> heroic dungeons -> Flex -> (Maybe) Normal
Hardcores: dungeons -> heroic dungeons -> Flex -> Normal Raids -> Heroic Raids

Both get to see almost the same content, with the exception of the bonus bosses. And even they could still be seen, if not conquered if they werent put in a linear design (have to kill boss A before you can go to boss B).

And, hey, let's throw a wild idea out there: Normal scenarios could be on par with normal dungeons, but throw in some heroic scenarios that range in difficulty from heroic dungeons to heroic raids(!), with appropriate loot.

And last but not least, but a disclaimer on the heroic dungeons/scenarios so people understand that it's not for facerolling with green gear anymore

Of course, this is just a rough foundation; there's plenty of kinks and stuff I'd iron out afterwards; especially the itemlevel differences between patches, which is just horribly large in my opinion.

[khalltusk]

The claim was made that people got bored doing the same dungeons over and over again and whined about it. Well since the game has nothing or virtually nothing but raiding left at this point the same claim can and should be made about raids. The raids are shitty IMO but that's an argument for another day. I don't necesarilly hate raiding but I don't want it to be the main staple of content. I'd rather just do it on a weekend as a pug if I have the time which is basically what i did in ICC.

Yeh, raids are shit in your opinion thats totally fine I disagree of course on that. I don't understand why people whine about "the same dungeons" in wrath when we had 4 new ones added during the expansion. Mop has had 0 new dungeons. Has had some scenarios added but nothing on the dungeon front. I enjoy doing dungeons (aside from shadow pan monastery it can go fuck it self as I find it so boring) but I only do one per day if that just for rep/valour.

I really would love to see more dungeons and a come back of the dungeon tier set with some quests to upgrade them. I would like profession recipes dropping from dungeons (for some rare plans or new quests from a boss drop that you work to unlock some cool stuff). I would even like a smelting place to be accessed from a dungeon only similar to BRD. The complaints of "but its a pain to access to" well you can solve that in two ways put one in a non elite trash spawned area near the entrance so a solo player can clear it OR put it at the end boss so when you have cleared the dungeon in LFD you can remain behind and do your smelting etc.

I would like to see little things like those added into dungeons to make them better all round experience rather than a tunnel vision into raid gearing that they currently are.

[Gilian]

I'm certain that no one appointed you the arbiter of what an entire segment of people think, but if you didn't see very vocal forums about how tired people were of running the same dungeons all the time, you simply weren't pay attention.

And you are not paying attention now I guess?

And if that was really a problem then how come you think it's a good idea to do the exact same with raids?

[Pua]

I really just want to hug you right now, please why can't we have more people like you. That was the single greatest post I've ever seen.

I'm glad someone saw it.

Exactly I don't know how many times i have been beyond nice in trying to offer...yes OFFER not force help and was met with very rude responses. It's not that people don't know that they are doing wrong, it's that they don't care they are doing something wrong. I love how people make bad players seem as if they are all genuinely good hearted trying to get better when that is vastly NOT the case.

Yeah, it's unfortunate. I invariably try to help people when I queue up in five-mans or LFR (particularly Protection warriors because that's where my real expertise lies) and I'm more often met with "lol" or some other inane gibberish than I am anything else.

No, it should stay because many, many people have put forth numerous valid reasons why it should while no one has put forth any valid (or even coherent) reason that it shouldn't.

Multiple valid reasons have been made for the removal of LFR; that you disagree with them (which is fine) doesn't make it untrue.

And you can learn playing WoW by trial and error. It is just less effective. Just as learning to cook by experimenting is.
You are not and never will be required to study WoW.

For everything outside of heroic raiding or high rated PvP, that's true. WoW is fundamentally a simple game which doesn't take any out-of-game effort to be reasonably good at, particularly if you're guilded.

The problem is that many of the LFR crowd quit anyway once they've cleared the raid, which takes a month at best. Or they're casual players who would stay playing even if LFR was removed, provided there was adequate alternative content to replace it.

That's what this thread was supposed to discuss, was it not? It's a shame it's turned into another LFR argument.

Its the changes that came with LFR to the community, the attitudes of the average player, and the idea that you deserve everything. It also attracts ADD gamers who have no intent on sticking with the game, thus the high turnover rates. LFR was a short-sighted implementation.

Well said.

A lot of the people who want LFR removed want endgame to be only for others who think like them. Anyone who thinks differently is unworthy to them.

I don't want LFR removed, I just question the size of the legitimate audience. If other things were available with which to develop your character at endgame (which this thread was supposed to discuss), I think LFR would die a death.

All the other posts have ranged from "they don't deserve any content because they lack devotion" to "let them run flex" to "let them grind My Little Panda's Island Adventure for epix." Do you really think anyone will be happy with alternatives like that?

I said in the other thread you and I were involved in that it was high time Blizzard stopped designing the game around raiders and what they think. If they whine that they're "forced to do [insert content]" that they don't want to, then Blizzard need to man up and say:

"Tough. Suck it up, Charlie Brown. It's not designed for you".

But no. Everything is dumbed down or made pointless just to stop a tiny percentage of players from crying. It's ridiculous.

It's not. I'll be the first to acknowledge that for many players (including me) it absolutely sucks in comparison. It's only better for the developers at Blizzard because they can concentrate all their resources on creating bosses and architecture for raids instead of having to split them between raids and 5-man dungeons. I don't know why the blame for this is constantly being pinned on casual players.

Nor me.

The casual players are fundamentally not to blame for this in any way, shape or form.

And if that was really a problem then how come you think it's a good idea to do the exact same with raids?

Ultimately, that's the question that needs answering.

By Ghostcrawler.

[purebalance]

I'm certain that no one appointed you the arbiter of what an entire segment of people think, but if you didn't see very vocal forums about how tired people were of running the same dungeons all the time, you simply weren't pay attention.

Yupp because running the same LFR over and over again is different how? And then leads you to want to head into flex, normal, heroic to repeat the same raid how?

Oh that's right LFR is EXACTLY the same as LFD except it's 25 man. There was no change from repeating 5 mans to repeating 25 mans.

[DeadmanWalking]

Yupp because running the same LFR over and over again is different how? And then leads you to want to head into flex, normal, heroic to repeat the same raid how?

Oh that's right LFR is EXACTLY the same as LFD except it's 25 man. There was no change from repeating 5 mans to repeating 25 mans.

People can run 5 mans repeatedly in the same day for loot. You can not for LFR so people only went into them once or twice a week (counting on queueing into first or later boss). Those 6 other days a week of not doing that wing tend to keep you from burning out on it.

[Glorious Leader]

Nor me.

The casual players are fundamentally not to blame for this in any way, shape or form.

It's fairly obvious I think. Once you blame the individual player then you can sort of turn a blind eye to the problem. LFR has been a BOON to the raiding community and obviously they are happy with it so if theirs a problem with it (and their is) it's far better to shift the blame onto the individual player then on the systems themselves so that they can keep the status quo of getting almost all the developer attention. You see it happen in politics all the time.

[Venant]

Maybe there needs to be something in place as the overall endgame that you are thinking about doing after the raid while you are raiding. As it stands now, there isn't much of an endgame outside of raiding, but maybe they need to invent something new, the only downside is that if it is too competitive with raiding it might result in nobody wanting to raid.

[Glorious Leader]

People can run 5 mans repeatedly in the same day for loot. You can not for LFR so people only went into them once or twice a week (counting on queueing into first or later boss). Those 6 other days a week of not doing that wing tend to keep you from burning out on it.

You just get burnt out on it by running it in 3 different difficulty modes in one week. Hell the raid itself is such massive time consuming piece of shit that you just get burnt out on it by running it on two modes. It's the exact same shit. It's fucking STUPID. I was running lfr tot to gear up for normal tot while running normal tot and was sick of fucking tot in about a month. HEAVING FORBID I try and get an alt in there and just repeat the same fucking raid bullshit ad nauseum. At least in the wrath model I could break it up a little bit. It does not keep you from burning out on it, you just have to do another wing on the other day and sooner rather then later you get burnt out on shitty raid content or get burnt out on raiding in general...

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Maybe there needs to be something in place as the overall endgame that you are thinking about doing after the raid while you are raiding. As it stands now, there isn't much of an endgame outside of raiding, but maybe they need to invent something new, the only downside is that if it is too competitive with raiding it might result in nobody wanting to raid.

I don't see how that's a downside for anybody, well except the people who like to raid.

[purebalance]

People can run 5 mans repeatedly in the same day for loot. You can not for LFR so people only went into them once or twice a week (counting on queueing into first or later boss). Those 6 other days a week of not doing that wing tend to keep you from burning out on it.

So what you're telling me is it's their own fault. They're still repeating the same raids over and over and over with no real sense nor urgency to progress to the next level because.... that's right the next level is still the same raid.

[khalltusk]

You just get burnt out on it by running it in 3 different difficulty modes in one week. Hell the raid itself is such massive time consuming piece of shit that you just get burnt out on it by running it on two modes. It's the exact same shit. It's fucking STUPID. I was running lfr tot to gear up for normal tot while running normal tot and was sick of fucking tot in about a month. HEAVING FORBID I try and get an alt in there and just repeat the same fucking raid bullshit ad nauseum. At least in the wrath model I could break it up a little bit. It does not keep you from burning out on it, you just have to do another wing on the other day and sooner rather then later you get burnt out on shitty raid content or get burnt out on raiding in general...

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I don't see how that's a downside for anybody, well except the people who like to raid.

It was the same thing with totc with its 4 modes people felt that they HAD to gear in all the lesser modes to get ready for a heroic mode or some shit.

Now you may have had a break and did not do the first tier and then wanted to join in on normal tot runs in a guild pug. I can understand that there were not that many great ways of gearing up aside from LFR. If however you were in a guild and were doing LFR just to maximize your gear chances then that's a personal problem rather than a game design one.

[Glorious Leader]

It was the same thing with totc with its 4 modes people felt that they HAD to gear in all the lesser modes to get ready for a heroic mode or some shit.

Now you may have had a break and did not do the first tier and then wanted to join in on normal tot runs in a guild pug. I can understand that there were not that many great ways of gearing up aside from LFR. If however you were in a guild and were doing LFR just to maximize your gear chances then that's a personal problem rather than a game design one.

Ironically the developers moved away from this precise problem only to come back to it. The difference I think is that normal tot was over tuned and/or the dumb ass developers expected me to go back and farm older content instead of running lfr with higher ilvl. In ToTC you could ignore it as catch up (which I guess totc 10 would be the equivalent lfr) because you could dungeon your way to catch up. In ToT I was faced with the choice of going bcak to do shitty old content (assuming I could get enough people willing) or spam lfr for catch up. BRILLIANT DESIGN...

The other thing is to big raids really don't help this. One thing about ToTC was that it was a smaller raid basically no trash and you could complete it in pretty short order. So even if you felt compelled to do 4 modes it was no big thing. Throne and SoO are MASSIVE and filled with trash.

[khalltusk]

Ironically the developers moved away from this precise problem only to come back to it. The difference I think is that normal tot was over tuned and/or the dumb ass developers expected me to go back and farm older content instead of running lfr with higher ilvl. In ToTC you could ignore it as catch up because you could dungeon your way to catch up. In ToT I was faced with the choice of going bcak to do shitty old content (assuming I could get enough people willing) or spam lfr for catch up. BRILLIANT DESIGN...

Yeh thats why I can understand some peoples frustration. There was no alternative.

I would thinkg having like so

1st tier of heroic dungeons 463, You can upgrade dungeon loot to 471 via JP. Valour vendors have some items for sale at 476 for dungeon players to farm for.
1st tier LFR 476, can buy valour vendor items with VP farmed from here as well so both LFR and LFD can be used to buy some VP items.

You can lock the VP behind reputation but do it so you can unlock x amount of rep from a dungeon per day same for LFR and daily quests. That way you have options to get rep at your own pace or maximize it by doing all of them.

New patch comes out
Dungeons get automatically upgraded to 471 loot (the 1st tier dungeons)
new 2nd tier dungeons come out with higher item level loot again just below LFR but can be upgraded to match it. new VP item vendor released.
New LFR comes out.

That way you have two catch up mechanics that work at a good pace and you can choose both if you wish but there at least is a good option.