What if blizzard added a "I hate it box" to LFR/LFD?

[Mysterymask]

Great idea. Lets make it so that anyone who hates leveling can never level up again or be forced to rescind their check mark.

BGs, questing, gathering, pet battles, grinding, and getting 4 other people to do it the old fashioned way is still there or just 1 max level to run you through like people used to do it...

honestly if you HATE leveling why bother doing it?


Murphy's Law: If its stupid but it works it ain't stuipd.

[MoanaLisa]

If the thread was about adding a like button would you still say it is one of the worst ideas you've seen?

Well, I would actually. I'm basically against game design by player vote.

Rating game features in game with like or dislike is pointless anyway. People should do what they like and not do what they dislike. The numbers will sort themselves out over time. I'm just imagining looking at some tally where a player says they dislike LFG and a count of how many times they used it over the weekend. Pointless.

[hyphnos]

Because no one is on low populated realms. You can do these things crossrealm but there aren't even tools available to do this except for a third party website and addon which probably 70-80% of subscribers don't even know they exist.

They have been making finding others to play with only harder for the sake of convenience. But hey, we don't get to complain about that right? Because you don't care about it.

For all their other faults, Blizzard did not create low population realms for the purpose of herding players into LFD/LFR - those tools give players on their realm a better option than not playing or hoping they can put together a viable group with the few players that are around.

This is not to say that Blizzard isn't at fault for not dealing better with low pop realms, but they didn't make them by design.

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Well, I would actually. I'm basically against game design by player vote.

Rating game features in game with like or dislike is pointless anyway. People should do what they like and not do what they dislike. The numbers will sort themselves out over time. I'm just imagining looking at some tally where a player says they dislike LFG and a count of how many times they used it over the weekend. Pointless.

The problem with this line of thinking has been pointed out by Ghostcrawler and possibly other blue posters and that is that players will go where the power rewards are. The data of what players are doing only shows what they are WILLING to do for the reward offered, not what they enjoy.

Blizzard loves to point this out as "mechanar" syndrome and such anytime they wish to shoot down a comment or request saying people will go where things are efficient and rewarding but not fun. Then they turn around and point out how many players are running LFR and proclaim it a success. There is no more evidence that players chain running dungeons in the past weren't having fun than there is that LFR players today are having fun. The only true test would be to put equal rewards everywhere in the game and then look at what players do.

If you view everything with the eye that if players are doing it, it is only because it is efficient (unless it is the content you as a dev prefer they be doing) - then all the player data in the world just says make more of what you approve of and assume players are doing it because that is fun and everything you don't want to provide they only do in large numbers because it is "efficient".

TLDR: You cannot look at what players are doing and assume they are having fun when the activity has the best rewards behind it.

[Granyala]

Challenge modes dont do it for you?

No the retarded zerg against the clock doesn't do it for me.
I also don't know people that run them. Didn't even get them on my main. :/

I rather want a tactical experience, like I did back in TBC where it ain't the end of the world when you take 10 seconds to think about a pull.

[Mysterymask]

personally I stand by my idea that the "I hate it box" shuts off LFD/LFR..i mean for all of you its what you want right?

I think most people "its damaging the community" is more " I have to deal with the commoners and I hate it"

not to mention to those who like say "Blizz doesn't give an alternative"...do you have an alternative? a feasible one? I mean Warlords is giving you build in OQ so you can be a bit more choosy instead of dealing with randoms and then you can find people cross realm to have a relatively decent Normal/Heroic group or a couple of people that are on call if you need to do leveling groups or to carry you through dungeons

[Pigglix]

I rather want a tactical experience, like I did back in TBC where it ain't the end of the world when you take 10 seconds to think about a pull.

Lolwat?

1) LF pally tank
2) drop Consecration
3) watch the DPS aoe the place like how it is today
4) Profit.

[Granyala]

Lolwat?

1) LF pally tank
2) drop Consecration
3) watch the DPS aoe the place like how it is today
4) Profit.

Yeah, if said pally had raid gear. But if he didn't (and I'm talking about alts here) you couldn't facetank everything.
Most certainly you did not facetank the trash in MgT or the ogre trash in Slabs. (pre nerf that is^^)

What I want is an alternative to running the same raid on every character.
Back in the day 5mans provided that.

[Ronduwil]

So this option can tell Blizzard who uses it but hate it.

Why would you use it if you hate it? I wish I had all the time in the world so I could waste 2-3 hours every night engaging in an activity I hate. Bored much?

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personally I stand by my idea that the "I hate it box" shuts off LFD/LFR..i mean for all of you its what you want right?

Exactly. No one's making you run LFR. If you don't like it don't run it.

[nekobaka]

BGs, questing, gathering, pet battles, grinding, and getting 4 other people to do it the old fashioned way is still there or just 1 max level to run you through like people used to do it...

honestly if you HATE leveling why bother doing it?


Murphy's Law: If its stupid but it works it ain't stuipd.

Everything you listed is part of leveling. Should Blizzard baby those who dont like something yet use it anyways? Blizzard tried it when it came to combining lockouts with one of the reasons of players feeling like having to run multiple lockouts and held that stance up until recently. In WoD we see separate lockouts for each difficulty. In certain cases it seems Blizzard has found babying players can be more detrimental particularly when trying to hold back players so they dont out pace those with less time on their hands.

You proposed removing access to a feature to those who dont like a feature. In that case how about letting those who dont like LFR get tier gear from the VP vendors again, then put in normal mode ilvl SoO VP gear on the vendors as well. All non-raid content that used to reward gear at the level that LFR took over and pushed down non-raid content once again rewards LFR level gear. LFR wasnt just plopped in the game with no changes to any other aspect of the game. Not everyone likes raiding as well and wants alternatives. So far the threads suggesting alternatives to LFR gear are getting shot down by LFRers and not normal/heroic raiders.

Well, I would actually. I'm basically against game design by player vote.

Rating game features in game with like or dislike is pointless anyway. People should do what they like and not do what they dislike. The numbers will sort themselves out over time. I'm just imagining looking at some tally where a player says they dislike LFG and a count of how many times they used it over the weekend. Pointless.

I dont think it should be solely focused on player vote. More of looking at ways to try and get the majority of the player base to start offering feedback rather than just the vocal minority including those who think they represent the majority. The numbers do tend to sort themselves out over time like LFR has shown along with GCs later responses on how things have changed. Development in particular WoW development takes a long time to see changes and waiting development cycles just to wait for something to sort itself out and then take development cycles to respond to those changes might find the changes trying to solve something which has since then morphed due to waiting too long. That changing factor is something that the developers have take in mind. The question is can there be methods that will result in providing better quality information to the developers or are the current methods the best out there for Blizzard and the customers?

[nghtmr]

Oh, just a "I hate it" box? what about "I love it"?

How to find out whether someone likes a feature or not?
Don't like it: use it once, twice, a few times... then have the opinion how it sucks, and never use it again...

Like it: use it frequently, every week, and with often multiple characters...

That's how the data can be interpreted rather efficiently.
Now if you use LFR or any other feature within the game that you dislike, there is no one else to blame but you yourself.

i HATE LFR but i queue for lfr because i "have" to it's the only way to get my character geared enough to do absolutely nothing because low pop is low pop. or even for flex groups which i like but dislike at the same time. I wish they'd drop lfr and flexible raid tier and just add 10 and 25 different instance ID's again like it was before they split it in wrath. the flexible idea is good though but it being it's own tier is what? why?

[Velerios]

---NEWSBREAK---

You still can run LFD AND LFR as a group: Simply get some people to run it with you. This was NEVER removed.

To force others to remove it only because you don't like it is simply stupid.

@ Granyala
So you did never do challenge modes, but complain that there is no challenging content. Run them, and if you get complete gold, then you can complain that there is no challenging content.

I think the main problem of the complainers is that nobody carries someone there.

Because no one is on low populated realms. You can do these things crossrealm but there aren't even tools available to do this except for a third party website and addon which probably 70-80% of subscribers don't even know they exist.

They have been making finding others to play with only harder for the sake of convenience. But hey, we don't get to complain about that right? Because you don't care about it.

1.) 5.4.2, release very soon™ change the already implemented raidbrowser to allow you to find groups crossrealm at least for currently raid for flex, 10 and 25 man and world bosses. Not as good as oqueue, but very basically it does it job.

2.) 6.0, release not so soon™ will add new tools for group finding. So you NEVER need to search for LFR again, and since all raid sizes except mythic will be crossrealm, it shoud be possible to

LFR will not be removed, why should they: with the new tools you can choose how to play; i personally don't have always time to look for a group, so LFR is for me all right; even if it is too easy.

[Ronduwil]

So far the threads suggesting alternatives to LFR gear are getting shot down by LFRers and not normal/heroic raiders.

Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be because normal/heroic raiders already have other avenues for gearing? If you're a normal/heroic raider then LFR was not built with you in mind. If you choose to run it anyway don't be surprised when you don't like it. You have three other modes available for you: Flex, Normal, and Heroic. Stick to doing what you like and quit complaining about LFR players running the content that was made for them.

[mistahwilshire]

This doesn't seem very constructive.

[Velerios]

i HATE LFR but i queue for lfr because i "have" to it's the only way to get my character geared enough to do absolutely nothing because low pop is low pop. or even for flex groups which i like but dislike at the same time. I wish they'd drop lfr and flexible raid tier and just add 10 and 25 different instance ID's again like it was before they split it in wrath. the flexible idea is good though but it being it's own tier is what? why?

Sorry, but what has shared instance-ids to do with flex and lfr: it is the same as a this translated saying from german: At night it's colder than outside; you say something that has absolutely nothing to do with this.
Also there will no longer be a shared id, since now all difficulties will be flexible from 10-25 except mythic with a fixed raid size of 20.

And like i already said: except for mythic you can then look for groups cross realm.

[Thetruth1400]

omg... Are people still whining about LFD? it's 100x better than spamming trade for 1hour to find a grp then having the tank leave when ure at the instance. Seriously why would you even suggest this, can't you see how stupid it is?

I disagree.
1) Even in Vanilla and TBC, I never struggled over and hour to find a group. Even today, the 30+ minute wait for DPS exists so that point is moot.
2) Back then when you had to look in trade to find someone at least you knew you were getting someone that was going to be held accountable for their actions. If they were horrible or acted like a prick, they were server wide blacklisted. You had to try to be a decent human being instead of the complete infestation that is LFD and LFR.

Sure, LFR and LFD are convenient in that you can just click one button to join the queue, but that doesn't make it better at all in terms of anything else. Convenience, that's it. The extreme amount of negatives it brought far outweighs the benefits.

[MoanaLisa]

I dont think it should be solely focused on player vote. More of looking at ways to try and get the majority of the player base to start offering feedback rather than just the vocal minority including those who think they represent the majority.

I'd like to see something like that as well although I have no idea how one could execute it. About the last thing I would want to see in game is some popup poll asking me questions. Perhaps there will be more possibilities for things like this once everyone is on the battlenet client. That has a lot of potential for stuff like this with direct private communication to Blizzard. Whether or not that ever happens remains to be seen. Despite what I do here, privately---now publicly I guess--I think that forum feedback is largely garbage and that Blizzard would do well to ignore it altogether.

[Mysterymask]

Everything you listed is part of leveling. Should Blizzard baby those who dont like something yet use it anyways? Blizzard tried it when it came to combining lockouts with one of the reasons of players feeling like having to run multiple lockouts and held that stance up until recently. In WoD we see separate lockouts for each difficulty. In certain cases it seems Blizzard has found babying players can be more detrimental particularly when trying to hold back players so they dont out pace those with less time on their hands.

You proposed removing access to a feature to those who dont like a feature. In that case how about letting those who dont like LFR get tier gear from the VP vendors again, then put in normal mode ilvl SoO VP gear on the vendors as well. All non-raid content that used to reward gear at the level that LFR took over and pushed down non-raid content once again rewards LFR level gear. LFR wasnt just plopped in the game with no changes to any other aspect of the game. Not everyone likes raiding as well and wants alternatives. So far the threads suggesting alternatives to LFR gear are getting shot down by LFRers and not normal/heroic raiders.

or hear me out...people who don't like LFR do normal modes for tier gear? I mean warlords is making Normal and heroic flexible so quite honestly if you don't like the LFR scene go find a normal or heroic group that doesn't require you to run LFR. If you feel you have to find a way to pull yourself out of that mindset because quite honestly your doing nothing but hurting yourself. If you don't like trying to find a normal group or hate normal mode, heroic mode, mythic mode maybe even try PVPing or hell even pet battles..

If after all that you STILL don't like it maybe you are playing the wrong game and should go find something else...

Not to mention what is really the difference between my suggestion of voluntary locking out of LFR/LFD and the other suggestion of removing it completely?
Only 1: people who DO like them are angry and will leave the game....Servers and MMOs need PEOPLE PLAYING in order to be successful...giving the biggest playerbase a kick in the nads to appease the upper crowd will hurt more than it helps...add to the fact that most people don't read patch notes they wont even realize it was going away then the day it does "poof" they pretty much say fuck it and leave in droves

at least when its voluntary you get the experience of it being gone without the side effects of it happening to other people

[Deleted]

They took away the bonus valor.

And don't add new 5-man dungeons as viable alternative for catch-up. Think about alts.

[Adrianoz]

There were both up- and downsides to the pre-LFD system. Prior to its implementation, I still remember organizing a group for running all WotLK dungeons in a row for the dailies; the process was not so horrific, though that was more than likely for the reason that I was still in school at that time, could login at dawn and play 'till dusk without RL business interfering and thus would also have no problems finding other people to play with.

The above was also, partly, what led me to remain in WoW at the time; I made friends and connections to the guys I ran with, because we had to socialize running and teleporting across Northrend to do all dungeons, and a social network was built; good tanks, healers and dps'ers were added to friends list, and regular runs were setup on a daily basis, until we were geared enough for raiding.

As the time for raiding came, I remember pug'ing Naxx 10/25, organizing regular runs using the contacts I had made from the previous dungeon runs, until I had a vast network of tanks and healers that I could whisp whenever needed, and then a friend I had made during this process invited me to join a raiding guild, and thus I became involved in organized, high-end raiding in Ulduar.

For me, it's not so much WotLK that was the best expansion, but it happened to be the expansion where I enjoyed WoW the most, and I progressed from nothing to something through time, effort and experience. My experiences with the old LFG system were good, and what kept me in the game was the social contacts I had established and the sense of belonging that made me an essential part in the raiding game, I felt that others depended on me so I stuck around, and would most def have left earlier had I been a casual, solo-player, just browsing through the endgame until boredom set in.

Now, on the other hand, I no longer have nearly enough time, energy or willpower to invest in the game, simply because I've matured from the gaming kid I used to be to an adult with employment, higher education, friends, social relations and a sense of belonging IRL that has replaced the need for me to find that in WoW, so I no longer feel compelled to setup a machine for raiding and had the LFD-system not existed, I would never have entered the dungeoneering and raiding aspects of the game if I became active again.

LFD is, in other words, a necessity for this game to thrive when its core base consists of adults with working lives, social obligations and other real life matters that tie up their time, whilst most other social groups who game in WoW will not care whether LFD exists or not because they have their own social circle that is imported from RL to play with, mostly school kids or youth groups. The ones who do oppose LFD do so for reasons that, I would assume, have to do with socializing; they might be embittered about not being able to find friends, they might miss the old sense of progression that existed, they might despise the fact that bad behaviour is more likely to be accepted as a result of anonymity.

For people who have real life obligations, who already have a social network or are involved in a social construction within the game, such as a guild, or who prefer to play WoW as a side-dish to other games they're involved in, LFD is a matter of little concern, they either support it and don't feel the need to develop relationships within the game since that desire is satifisfied IRL, or are indifferent about it as they don't group with randoms either way.

TL;DR: In other words, LFD is a contributing factor to the atomization of the population, as the need for socialization disintegrates, and so does the prospects of retaining players through meaningful social relationships in the game, but it is also a reaction to the same issue of atomization, in which a revolving door of increasingly casual players with obligations outside of the game are unable/unwilling to invest the time, effort and energy required to progress through the traditional system and so require a quick-fix that allows them to enjoy the content within a reasonable time-frame.

[nekobaka]

Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be because normal/heroic raiders already have other avenues for gearing? If you're a normal/heroic raider then LFR was not built with you in mind. If you choose to run it anyway don't be surprised when you don't like it. You have three other modes available for you: Flex, Normal, and Heroic. Stick to doing what you like and quit complaining about LFR players running the content that was made for them.

And what about those who dont want to raid at all and are looking for alternatives yet get shot down by the LFRers? Not everyone gives a shit about raiding, yet it seems LFRers think everything should revolve around it as if they are scared what happens if other content is given more attention.