What percentage of the population would play, if all raid modes had same gear?

[Queen of Hamsters]

People who play for the gear are usually the ones that waste energy obsessing over gear quality (loln00bs get epic quality from easy content wtf?) and they're also easy to "wear out" as they run out of gear to obtain.

Of course there has to be different rewards for different levels of difficulty, I'm not even sure why this is a subject to discuss. And higher level of difficulty requires stronger tools, and that is where gear comes in...nothing more. 1 single difficulty is the only way to have the same gear from all raid content, and then there'd be no different "modes" and the people who want something more in terms of difficulty than LFR would be driven away. Not very clever.

The current system is fine, gear is a means to an end and higher difficulties warrant better tools.

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most of those who claim how much they play for "chalenge" would quit cause they are in 90% depending on gear to overcome enocounters not on skill. and it would be wildly seen how much they really suck in comparison to really "good" players.

chalenge modes shown it best this expansion what would happen - nobody is runing them cause they dont give a f**** exept for crappy trnasmog gear therefore most of wow population just ignored them completly or are doin them from boredom and for simple points count not for chalenge -_-

Way to make up numbers. Coming across as very bitter to say the least.

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I'm sure it must seem like that to the Paris Hilton generation of lazy useless slobs that have never had to work for anything in their lives.

And playing a 12+ game for pixels is "work"?

I lol'd.

I don't play for gear as the ultimate reward, but I'd still quit playing if we got 1 difficulty and thus "the same gear" in all raid content. There'd be no reason to raid if there was only 1 difficulty which would undoubtedly be catered to the masses, in other words LFR.

[Deleted]

I raid for the challenge, not for the gear so I would still go for the hardmodes.

[Roia]

This is honestly a dumb question. You remove gear (and to a lesser extend achievements) from higher difficulties and you remove the main goal incentive to pretty much 99% of raiders. World first guilds may still do it for prestige initially, but after the first few weeks pretty much everyone would just end up raiding the easiest difficulty until they get bored. Personally I raid for character progression which could be gear, achievements etc, but once you remove that "sense of progression", most people would probably quit after defeating the raid a few times.

[TheWindWalker]

You do realize right that Blizzard apparently agrees with you and now considers LFR non-compelling endgame and won't be in WoD right?

LFR isn't being removed. They're just removing it as the only path for casual gearing. Otherwise it's just a thing you can queue up for if you feel like it.

[nekobaka]

LFR isn't being removed. They're just removing it as the only path for casual gearing. Otherwise it's just a thing you can queue up for if you feel like it.

You mean for non-raiders. LFR wasnt designed for raiders and was targeted towards an audience that didnt raid to give them something new to do and stick them on the long term RNG grind of raiding. Just because someone doesnt do organized raiding doesnt mean they are not a no-lifer just as someone who does organized raiding doesnt mean they are a no-lifer or hard core. It shows quite well with the LFRs who call themselves casuals yet bitch about having to grind the legendary on their 6th or so alt while the majority of players has yet to obtain it.

It was never the only path for casual gearing. You could always casually raid normal modes. In fact I'm pretty sure I spend less time raiding normal/heroic than most people do on LFR(1 day a week raiding ftw).

In Cata I spent one to two hours a week doing PuG raiding on my own time getting normal mode rewards seeing the current tier raid. I dont see how LFR can be considered casual in comparison. Easier and more accessible on realms with poor raid populations sure, time wise no. Personally from a time standpoint I think raids have gotten too large especially when there isnt split wing lockouts or multiple smaller raids.

[Deleted]

when there isnt split wing lockouts or multiple smaller raids.

So.. flex does exactly that...

[nekobaka]

So.. flex does exactly that...

Gone next expansion. Blizzard said they didnt like groups skipping ahead and that difficulty is going to be the new normal mode along with players no longer getting teleported to the raid like flex does now.

[traen]

What is RPG without motivation?
If improving your skills is unrewarding than it's probably time to find a better game to play.

And no, hardcore players won't play lfr. They'll stop playing completely.

[Grimreaper]

Gear doesn't matter. If you are playing with gear as a goal, you are doing it wrong, and are not getting the "fun" from this game. Play to have fun, to be challenged, for the camaraderie. Gear is just a bonus that lets you do more, they do go hand in hand. But gear just happens, you shouldn't chase it, you will only feel like that one piece of BiS you really need NEVER drops. You will care less about game play and more about who got that trinket. This in turn makes you less valuable to your fellow raiders and probably makes you act like a bit of a whiner. These are the same people that think meters matter.

This is not directed at you OP but to anyone who also decides to read this thread.

I dont raid for gear, i gear for raids. Getting BiS geared as fast as possible isnt my goal, my goal is to kill everything there is to kill. Killing stuff comes easier with better gear however.

[TheWindWalker]

It was never the only path for casual gearing. You could always casually raid normal modes. In fact I'm pretty sure I spend less time raiding normal/heroic than most people do on LFR(1 day a week raiding ftw).

You don't really understand the concept of LFR and who's expected to use it, apparently. Or rather, you may just be intentionally avoiding thinking about it like a distant traumatic memory. When someone says "casual" when refering to "LFR" they aren't talking about people willing to go out searching for a group of people who are willing to take them in for an organized event in which they are personally responsible for pulling their weight. What the rest of us are talking about are people who "want to do something but not have to stress out or deal with the social interaction aspect of it." They didn't add LFR so we could go "oh well, why don't you go PuG one then?"

You mean for non-raiders. LFR wasnt designed for raiders and was targeted towards an audience that didnt raid to give them something new to do and stick them on the long term RNG grind of raiding

Whether or not you like it, devs have refered to LFR as "raiding" and mentioned "raiders" when talking about it. Semantics are all that's left.

[Mihalik]

What I don't understand is this obsession that some people have who don't do normal/hc raiding with belittling the achievements of those who do and adamantly want to see an end of higher difficulty content.

First of all, a fairly large segment of the population raids. At least on one character. Secondly those people tend to be the engines behind a lot of activity that is indirectly related. Crafting, the economy of consumables, enchants, professions, etc. Their activities also snowball into other areas such as achievement hunting, world PvP, challenge modes. Also a fairly large segment of the raiding population participates in the lower to upper median brackets of competitive Arena and RBG pvp.

The loss of this core population would have fairly severe effects on nearly every other aspect of the game, would kill many guilds, social circles etc. This would take more then the raiders away from WoW.

As much as some don't agree with WoW having Raiding at its core, it is one of the main reasons why the game took off so well compared to other MMO's. It hit a balance between the insane grinds of its predecessors like EQ and between other more casual activities.

Simply providing challenging content without no rewards to differentiate between the easy and the difficult wouldn't work. People do harder things for a bigger reward, so they can show off their achievements.

Saying that HC raiding should be removed because only 10% (probably more) of the population takes part in it, is like saying, we should no longer teach and bother with hard sciences as only 10% of the population takes active part.

P.S Tho I agree that increased variety should be added to pre-raid max level content. (I count LFR as pre-raid), Scenarios, 5 mans, World Bosses and Timeless Isle type content is a step in the right direction. I would like to see more things tho, such as group quests with higher rewards, world events etc. This type of content should provide gear equal to LFR to allow people to gear for higher difficulty raiding their own way. LFR would be there to see the content and to gear faster for those who don't wish to gear past that point.

[Giscoicus]

It was never the only path for casual gearing. You could always casually raid normal modes. In fact I'm pretty sure I spend less time raiding normal/heroic than most people do on LFR(1 day a week raiding ftw).

No it really was. How do you gear during 5.2 casually? You arent doing 5.0 normal/heroic raids, no dungeons, rep rewards were 489 or so.

[nekobaka]

Whether or not you like it, devs have refered to LFR as "raiding" and mentioned "raiders" when talking about it. Semantics are all that's left.

I was referring to non-raiders in the case of prior to LFR. Blizzard wasnt targeting the has been vocal minority that saw some raid content in WotLK then found themselves on dead PuG communities in Cata and cried up a shit storm complaining about raiding being anti-casual all of a sudden. The target was the majority who wasnt interested in raiding. Traditional raiding was not something these players was going to do and in came a new mode in an attempt to target those who are not interested in traditional organized raiding. I am not arguing semantics in use of the word raiders. I am arguing your use of the word casual.

[worstpvperus]

Change the topic to "What percentage of the population actually wants challenging content?"

The challenging content is still there but the the rewards are just worse.

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I've used this argument so much to explain how I feel when they removed rating requirement in PvP... in all honesty, the people who argued that PvP wasn't fair w/ rating requirement, were basing all their first hand experiences from BG's... Yes I know, it's pathetic on their behalf, but delusional individuals think that PvP should be balanced around random BG's that have no MMR system set in place. When blizzard gave in and removed rating requirement, I honestly wanted to destroy blizzard, make that whole company crumble down... there was no logical reason to do it and it only made it clear that blizzard was starting to change their plan and focus almost all their energy on casuals... well I hope you're happy blizzard, I hope you enjoy the scum players who come and go because they don't care for the challenge... all they want to do is see the content and then peace out. Blizzard could have stayed w/ their hardcore players and could have kept producing content like sunwell, but blizzard wanted to change it up... well here's the change, a dying game that will never see the light again.

There is you just choose to ignore it. Rating and a second set of gear means you have to wait to be competitive rather then have skill be the only thing holding you back. I think the removal of weapons was going to far but a whole set of gear was to much.

[BatteredRose]

The majority.

[crakerjack]

The challenging content is still there but the the rewards are just worse.

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There is you just choose to ignore it. Rating and a second set of gear means you have to wait to be competitive rather then have skill be the only thing holding you back. I think the removal of weapons was going to far but a whole set of gear was to much.

Bu... But I liked slaughtering undergeared players in BG's :[

[worstpvperus]

Bu... But I liked slaughtering undergeared players in BG's :[

You don't need gear to slaughter newbs just out play them. I can 1v3 as ranged but I do suck at melee... and die constantly.

[crakerjack]

You don't need gear to slaughter newbs just out play them. I can 1v3 as ranged but I do suck at melee... and die constantly.

Oh i out play them, but i still want that rewarding aspect that's obtained by achieving something great like killing a boss or obtaining a high rating... both are great to achieve, but only one offers a reward, seems kinda stupid if you ask me. It's not enough to prove my skill by obtaining a certain rating in arena, i want to be rewarded for obtaining that rating by either getting a set of gear or a weapon... or possibly both. It's not like the higher quality in my gear would change anything... if i had the same gear as the average player, i'd still kill them, but i'd walk away w/ less health. Regardless i'm going to go on a killing spree in a BG, so it's kind of annoying to not be rewarded better loot because worse players believe that PvP should be balanced around random BG's that have no MMR system like arena/rated BG's which you have to do to even get the gear. It's pretty much a slap in the face because it's not like they'd balance the difficulty of heroic raids around heroic dungeons.

[worstpvperus]

Oh i out play them, but i still want that rewarding aspect that's obtained by achieving something great like killing a boss or obtaining a high rating... both are great to achieve, but only one offers a reward, seems kinda stupid if you ask me. It's not enough to prove my skill by obtaining a certain rating in arena, i want to be rewarded for obtaining that rating by either getting a set of gear or a weapon... or possibly both. It's not like the higher quality in my gear would change anything... if i had the same gear as the average player, i'd still kill them, but i'd walk away w/ less health. Regardless i'm going to go on a killing spree in a BG, so it's kind of annoying to not be rewarded better loot because worse players believe that PvP should be balanced around random BG's that have no MMR system like arena/rated BG's which you have to do to even get the gear. It's pretty much a slap in the face because it's not like they'd balance the difficulty of heroic raids around heroic dungeons.

I just want the T2 weapons back and a new pvp enchant each expansion. That is enough for me personally. There is an enchant on live that gives you a weapon chain + 500 pvp power which is something even pvers can't access. I just think a second set of gear is way overkill. Anyone bitching about a weapon is a shitter and should be ignored thou.

[Alvito]

I would stop running heroics that is for sure. If for no other reason then the tiny horrible pool of players for it on my server would up and vanish.