Are you happy with LFR in its current state? Attempt at a constructive discussion...

[Tempro]

I see plenty of threads based on how people feel about LFR. And the general concensus I see, are either that's it's just fine or that it's crap and should be removed. Neither of these viewpoints are very constructive in my opinion, and serves nothing else than to keep the gap between the community's various opinions.

I come from the time of TBC, wotlk raiding and a small part of Cata. Having come back from a 2 year hiatus from the game recently, i've made some observations. Particularly about the community, but that's a whole different matter for some other thread. While I like being able to play on a casual/non-committing time frame, and still see the content, I must say that the involvement in LFR has felt rather lackluster. Didn't give me a sense of accomplishment in any way. I'm not saying it's a totally crap system and that i'd like it gone. On the contrary, I think it has it's uses. ¨But regardless of what layer of the raiding community you're coming from you should feel slightly worried about the step from LFR to flex and above. The raiding community in general is lacking new blood. And let's face it. There doesn't appear to come any, from the new players. One thing I've never understood, was why the trials at the Temple of the White Tiger were never designed as a sort of attunement to LFR. Putting up some requirements in order to progress. A trial for each LFR raid tier, based on the abilities you'd get to experience from the bosses in there. It would allow a step up in difficulty and thus diminish the gap between LFR and Flex. In the spirit of LFR it shouldn't be time consuming. I imagine it to be a short test of fx 10 mins, comprised of a DPS test and handling a couple abilities that could come from a boss, such as avoiding something on the ground and swapping targets. The technology is already there, so why not expand on it and utilise it to help players want to learn new things and become better? I know it's supposed to be a tourist mode, and is only there to allow the casual playerbase to see the content. But I am in no doubt that if LFR stays in it's current shape, that playerbase will also start to diminish even more than it already has.

I remember back when there was first talk of the ingame dungeon guide. Some hated the idea, because it meant you didn't have to search for it and research encounters and other known databases. Personally I welcome it, but yet again I find it rather lacking. It lists abilities made by the boss and it's extras, but that's it. Feels kinda like a project put on but never followed through. You don't get a sense of what comes when on the various bosses. Only example I can recall where I find it to be suitably elaborate is Thok. I'm sure there's more examples, but it's the one that popped to mind. This brings me to my next point. Why isn't the dungeon guide used as yet another sort of attunement, that you are required to look in it before being allowed to enter? I know, it might sound silly having an attunement that only requires you to open up a tab and potentially just move on without giving it a second thought. But potentially it also might mean more people will have a closer look at it, and actually have a read for a few minutes about what the boss will do to them, and that alone should be a quite strong incentive to go ahead with it.

It's a personal opinion of mine that these things could help show players even more of what the game has to offer and more of a taste of raiding on a higher level. Thus it might spark a desire to raid on a higher level.

I hope that most of you can see where i'm going with these thoughts, and have an even higher hope that you'll agree with me, on top of it.

/Tempro

[Mormolyce]

It's not meant to feel like an accomplishment, that's what raiding is for. In fact the desire to feel accomplishment is and always has been one of the carrots to lead you into joining a raiding guild. LFR is casual content for people who don't have the time or inclination to raid.

I see a lot of people returning to the game experiencing some culture shock regarding LFR. The truth is if you want the full raiding experience, join a team and get raiding. Just like back in TBC or any other era.

I think LFR is fine for what it is. I wish Blizzard would improve the kick system (in dungeons too, it's even worse there) and maybe some other minor improvements. But that's about it. I personally wouldn't object to more "hard" LFR bosses you actually need to talk to each other to beat, eg Lei Shen.

[Deleted]

It became obsolete with addition of flex, and now it's simply harming the overall community. Too many people feel "comfortable" with seeing the content by doing nothing, like in a cinema. I do not think one should be simply given the experience on a plate for pressing a button to queue, since it stagnates the players, and people who might of became raiders one day don't even have a chance at that, since they'll never have a reason to try. And by Ysmir, raiding community really need more fresh meat right now, believe to an ex co-leader who handled most of the recruitment.

Somehow me, raiding 5 days a week and my friend, who vigorously refused to put in more than a few hours a week in to the game managed to organize normal pugs during cata, and now with the biggest obstacle, forming a group, not an issue with flex, there's really no reason to have LFR around. It does little more to prepare people for raiding than hitting a training dummy, yet takes away the reason that got me in to raiding in the first place - the wanderlust, wondering what best players are fighting right now, the urge to kill the bosses when they are actually relevant and the wish to look fancy, in that best armor set.

Don't get me wrong, I don't wanna say that everything should be hard to do, heck the difficulty of heroic raids in mists was half the reason I left (combined with the constant recruitment that started to feel like a second job), but if there's no effort, there's no motivation to be better. And no one can really argue that flex has a high skill requirement or way too high expectation from players.

[melodramocracy]

I am (or was). On paper, it's a good intro for players to see bosses, and a good introduction to raiding for folks who are less skilled at the game, or have never set foot in a raid.

Flex is arguably a proper replacement for it, but is also prone to community driven exclusion (see: absurd requirements), which does absolutely nothing for the latter group mentioned prior.

Where LFR fails miserably is ever feeling like you have to run it repeatedly for a given task. Most end game content here actually has poor replay value, and is only tolerated because of the dangled carrots within, but LFR is especially mind - numbing after even a handful of visits.

[Heldamon]

5man dungeons usually already have soft versions of the raiding bosses abilities. Check the boss fights on each expansion.

[MoanaLisa]

Melodramocracy makes an excellent point that applies to more than just end game: there's a ton of evidence that the days when a majority of the playerbase was interested in running PVE content several or many times to achieve something are done. It's not just raiding, it's all of it. Dungeons quickly get boring if too easy, abandoned if too difficult, and hitting the sweet spot is impossible because there are millions of sweet spots. The same applies to leveling: too easy and it's trivial, too difficult and people go to play something else. Of course there are those that still live for the struggle but for the most part patience is not very much in evidence, in game or on forums.

Further, the playerbase will continue to diminish whether Raid Finder is left alone, improved or removed altogether. It's a myth in any case that raiding drove World of Warcraft's popularity during any part of its existence. It's the nature of popular entertainments to wax and wane in popularity. MMO's as a group, subscription or F2P are less attractive to gamers in 2013 than they were in 2005-2008 for a variety of reasons. WoW has further to fall but a larger pillow to land on as it were. But fall it will as does any popular entertainment after a while.

I used to write a lot about how Blizzard was missing out with Raid Finder by not making it too difficult but at the same time providing more direction using raid alerts and ground circles, etc. about what people--primarily DPS, the bulk of the raid--were supposed to do with mechanics. That never worked out although it would have been easy enough to accomplish. Raid Finder's primary target audience has primarily been those who never raided before, were never in raiding guilds, didn't have the time to gear up or the inclination to do so, or those who were simply curious to see what the instance was like. Expecting twenty-five random players of all skill levels (but leaning towards raid inexperience to none at all) to co-ordinate anything, much less the bulk of players responding correctly to a specific mechanic without something like a virtual raid leader was always going to be hopeless. Players anxious to cause problems or go the lazy route have done the rest.

I don't believe that putting up any sort of additional gates or barriers to entry is the answer. There's no possible way that anything of the kind is all-of-a-sudden going to turn more experienced raiders generally into people who think that someone who has only done Raid Finder is ready for anything else. That's human nature and the verdict on that I think is already in.

I'll reserve any further comment since Blizzard obviously has plans to change it into something else. Until we have some real idea what those plans entail there's really no point in saying much more about it in its current form as too much has already been said by too many people other than to say that despite its popularity it's been a missed opportunity. Good luck on having a constructive discussion. Nothing would please me more.

[nekobaka]

Well the developers are rethinking the direction for LFR after their goals to make it a long term grind for non-raiders has failed. So far it looks like LFR is being taken off the pedestal and being demoted to "tourist" level with a focus for those who want to see the content and might like LFR while letting those who didnt like raiding in the first place and want alternative to have just that. WoW caters to a wide variety of players and it should do just that rather than trying to shove everyone into the same thing which has failed for Blizzard two expansions. No one asked for the LFR that was delivered to players. The players who asked for LFR and Flex with the cross realm group finder was raiders looking for easier methods to find groups including cross server to deal with realms with too small of a raid population. That cross realm group finder that was introduced as an official method for OQ had been asked from the player based from WotLK to which the prior system got left to rot while the developers started developing LFR which had been in planning from WotLK. To think what if the developers didnt try to over top themselves and delivered the system that players asked for in the first place.

I dont like LFR in its current size format. Reasons for it are to deal with queue issues and an epic feel. Queue issues have gotten upwards to twice as long as Cata heroics for DPS which in turn is about as long as a Cata heroic run on top of another hour to clear for one wing which is about the combined time I would spend finding and doing a PuG normal mode raid in Cata. Doesnt sound so casual friendly to me. A factor in the queue increase could be the lack of relevant five man content later in the expansion as the start of the expansion had tanks complaining about having queues and short queue times for DPS. If that is a strong reason then more five mans in WoD should help. From the aspect of epic I find it to just be more of a frustrating cluster fuck and brings all the bad qualities of BGs into a PVE form. Wrath gate was to me was an epic cluster fuck with no one knowing what was going on prior or a need for holy-trinity and coordination. If LFR isnt supposed to have coordination and prior knowledge of fights then it fails and should get changed to something like wrath gate. If it is going to be a cluster fuck then might as well be a fun cluster fuck.

The developers have to find some other long term grind for players including those who want to do alternatives to raiding. As long as LFR doesnt get placed back on the pedestal to outshine alternatives which in turn shoved players with no interests in raiding into something they dont enjoy then I feel LFR will be in the proper spot for those who want to see the content or enjoy the game play aspect of LFR.

Personally as someone who is no longer a raider and if I had wanted to see the content then I would want to do such by ether scenario or five man format. At the end of the month the only thing that is going to keep me subscribed is enjoyment of the game play, not because of shiny gear or story.

[Mosotti]

LFR is more than fine for what it is. You can't really provide a "true" raiding experience to 25 RANDOM people that usually don't talk at all. People "expecting" more from LFR and pretending they are much better than it should never enter it instead of bitching. Everytime there's some strategy or some silly "strategy" thing, there's usually at least a wipe. LFR at the start of a tier is a wipe fest. Who says LFR is easy is a moron, LFR is easy for organized people, which is not what you will find in there.

Do I want that changed? NO. If I'd want organized shit and "real" challenges I'd put time in "real" raiding

It's obvious that you can't organize random people, especially if you have the luck to get an incredible amount of retards at once. Last time I was in there, there was this dude trying to make the retards do the right thing and he was constantly doing warnings "KILL AMBER". I think 2-3 people were actually doing that, so we wiped on berserk. Stayed on that Korven dude for like 8 minutes, it was an amazing feast of galactic stupidity

If such extremely fucking easy thing can't be executed while someone is actually telling you exactly what to do, why complain about the state of the LFR?

[MW4Life]

Although I don't run it anymore, I appreciate LFR for what it is. It's where I got familiar with my MW Monk in a raid setting, and now I actually do pretty well for myself in normal raids and other higher level content. In other words, although I am now geared and have graduated well beyond LFR's challenge, I do not look down my nose on it or the players who run it exclusively.

As a side note, I used to believe that the most foul players WoW had to offer could be found in the BG. After LF-[this and that] was introduced to the game I quickly learned that is was the same bullshit trolls and wanna be witty, Eric Cartman type players across the board. People ninja pulling, folks trying to wipe the raid, folks who work to demean and insult others are all to common in LFR, but in LFR's defense it's like that throughout WoW. I would like to see something added to the game, not a 3rd party addon, but something added to the game by Blizzard that mark people other than tanks who pull bosses along with some sort or peer review system (the specifics of which I cannot comment on), so that nasty players can be quickly identified and ostracized.

My problem, then, with LFR is that it's a griefer's playground and what we now have in place for dealing with such behavior is weak.

[Dasani]

I have no problem with LFR existing or having other people raid LFR. I have no problem that some people enjoy LFR and I can appreciate the fact LFR is the only way some people get to see raids (watered down as they are).

The only problem I have is the way blizzard designs shit to more or less force you to do LFR. Now on my main, I never stepped foot in LFR and I never will. The only time LFR has better gear than what I have is when an expansion first hits, and i'd much rather run normal mode and get what I can than do LFR for minor upgrades over the blues and greens I quested in while leveling. Beyond that, LFR is pointless the entire rest of the expansion.

The problem lies in your alts... Now if you level up all your alts and "maintain" them properly, keep them in current content the entire time, you can pug your way through raids, gear them up, etc and never have to worry about LFR either. But if you decide to make an alt mid or late expansion, you are fucked and LFR is in your future. There's really almost no way around it.

First of all, theres the legendary questline. You have to run vaults, HOF, terrace, and so on for sigils. Then after getting all of those, you have to run TOT and Siege for secrets, then TOT and siege some more for runestones. The harsh reality is unless you just happen to know enough people who are working on their alts at the exact same time as you to form a real raid to do this content, you are stuck doing LFR. If you needed sigils right now and already exhausted siege, how are you going to get them? There sure aren't anymore random pugs for Vaults and HOF and terrace anymore. They are virtually non-existent outside of the occasional achievement run or heroic run (for achievements, again) and even those are exceedingly rare. You are prettymuch stuck doing LFR to get your additional sigils.

Same goes for TOT. I can't even recall the last time I saw a group looking for pugs for TOT that wasn't doing achievements or heroics. There is just no reason to form these kinds of raids. The sad reality is, even Siege LFR has better gear than TOT normal. It completely kills the pug community for TOT normals because why suffer through pugging a group for it, risking it falling apart, risking failing at bosses, etc when you can simply queue for Siege LFR and are 100% certain to complete any wing you go in provided you sink enough time into it and simultaneously get better gear for doing so? LFR kills the desire for people to pug older raids by offering better rewards and easier to get rewards.

Next problem is the gear rewards themselves. Now if you are lucky enough, you might have your guild willing to carry your alt through current content raids, and this is especially true if it is everyone's plan to have you eventually use that alt for the benefit of the guild such as switching it to your main or starting up an alt raid team or bring in a specific class for a specific fight, etc. But outside of certain situations or your guild just being really generous to you, you have no hopes of doing Siege raids on your fresh 90 without running LFR. You have to get gear. And where are you going to get it from? LFR.

Worst part is, even with a full set of the 496 gear from the timeless isle, you still can't even queue for siege LFR because they don't provide you with a second trinket or any kind of weapon/offhand unless you farm shit tons of timeless coins. Sometimes you have to run lower LFRs like TOT just to hope to get a weapon just to get high enough to get into siege LFR.

That's the kind of shit that drives me crazy. I don't care that LFR is there or that it exists, i'm just tired of having the game designed in such a way that using LFR is 20 times faster than any other possible alternative to gear up and otherwise take care of your fresh alts and it forces you to either do LFR or make the conscious decision to disregard LFR and take many, many times longer to do anything productive with your alt. Those are your only choices, so which one do you think everyone takes? That is when it becomes a problem, because once you get in LFR, you find out what a shit hole it really is. People have no clue what is going on, how the fights work, how to deal with any of the mechanics. Most of them EXPECT someone else to tell them exactly what to do prior to the pull. They can't be bothered to look anything up on it, they just go in there expecting to have their hand held and spoon fed relevant info just prior to pulling and then piss and moan and blame others if they fail because it wasn't their fault they didnt know what to do. THen even if they do know what to do, most of them fail so hard it doesn't even matter. Hitting berserk timers on bosses because people are pulling a quarter of the DPS they should be in the ilevel of gear they have to have just to get inside the door.

It's ridiculous and horrible. Thankfully most of it is tied up in that god damn legendary cloak quest and I hope to shit they don't have anything else like that in WOD that forces all your characters to pain through LFR again.

So yeah, I don't care that LFR is there, I just think it's a shitty place I never want to go and I get pissed off whent he game is designed to force me in there.

I believe the sad reality is blizzard intentionally designs it that way to force better players in there to carry the shitty ones because if all of them were as shitty as the lowest scum you typically see in LFR, they would need 15 stacks of determination on every single boss to kill it. They WANT the better players to go in there and hold their hand and carry them and it's disgusting.

Edit: I guess what i'm really saying in so many words is I hate LFR being the only catch-up mechanic available to you. Timeless isle shit at the end of the expansion only helps you get into the latest LFR faster, it doesn't provide any meaningful gear to actually use in current content. ANd there are NO other alternatives. Either try to make your own raid for older content raids and hope for drops, or suck it up and do LFR with leeches and failures.

[Raelbo]

I am pretty happy with LFR right now. For SoO I used it quite a bit for the first month and generally the experience was good.

The biggest impact on how much LFR I use has come from Flex. After a few weeks of doing LFRs I had pretty much graduated entirely to Flex mode. But I have still made the occasional trip back to LFR when I have felt not in the mood for the more serious flex format.

Last week I actually tanked wing 3 with a guildie who was there for some gear. It was actually quite a bit of fun. The group was pleasant with a fair amount of banter going on. No afkers. No ninja pullers. No healers ignoring their role in an effort to top the dps meters. People generally knew what they were doing and the DPS and HPS was more than enough to ensure a smooth run. Overall it was relatively stress free and just a generally fun way to spend a bit of time.

[Deleted]

lfr is fine and if the dungeon journal cant be read by you, you can allways use the way of 5year olds and watch it@youtube

[Tempro]

lfr is fine and if the dungeon journal cant be read by you, you can allways use the way of 5year olds and watch it@youtube

Ohh, the thread had a good run of well-elaborated and constructive posts right up until this one.


Reading through the replies, I must say a lot of good points are being made. Some of them I agree with, and some of them not. What got my attention was the point made by Dasani, that even raiders are pushed to do LFR. I agree. Things like the legendary cloak which, in my mind, is a pure raiding reward, shouldn't have anything to do with LFR. It's been a means of forcing raiders to do LFR and, intentionally or not, made them carry the headless chicken out there. While I believe in that upping some things in LFR in terms of difficulty/attunement, I also agree that the step from LFR to proper raiding needs to be evident in rewards.

[Deleted]

I find LFR to gather the worst that World of Warcraft has to offer. If the goal of LFR to be a self-sustaining mini raiding experience to see the end bosses for newer non raiders of WoW, it has failed. The 'smoothest' LFR's are on Wednesday, when the raiders are queueing to complete their sets. It is an experience that is tuned for 5 or so people to understand what is going on at any time (regretably, these people are often the tanks, getting to that later.) However, with LFR being consistently rammed down our throats as 'aimed towards the casuals', something changed in the mentality of LFR raiders. They assume, and believe, they are the ones who can do whatewver they want in the run, and get loot. They believe attacking the 'top dps' or 'tanks' will get them rewards because they are 'raider elitist scum'. Unfortnately, these 'carriers' had to attend LFR until SoO. Flex has completely killed LFR by allowing the players who bother with any form of gear or skill to do Flex. While there are many flex groups 550 ilvl+, I generally do one weekly with ilvl 500+. Doesn't matter at all.

With LFR, it does really come from the phrase, 'if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys'. And Blizzard's reevaluation of LFR as a tool is welcome news to me - it is training 'future' raiders in the opposite of what they should e learning, and I know from experience that it is driving 'newer' people away who wish to make the step up to Flex.

[crunk]

no.


SoO is significantly more difficult than previous LFR tiers. They've set a precedent for LFR being faceroll, they should leave it that way. Its what people expect. Having mechanics that kill you in LFR give me a headache.


Basically, nerf LFR.

[Ryme]

I'm not thrilled with it's existence in the game, I feel it detracts more than it provides. However, with the addition of flex, I can deal with LFR - there's a real option now for people to pug their way into content that will try, at least a little, to fight back - which is fantastic.

[Buu]

I think as most of LFR critics you mistake the behavior of the player that dump themselves in LFR, with the system.

IF the "worst of WoW" decided to improve themselves, would be LFR that horrible? And now think, without LFR, where do you think those players would be?

Before advocating the incompetence of Blizzard, try to imagine the extent of terms in which they think. Pretty long, huh?

[Deleted]

Oh no, as an idea, it was made with the best of intentions. The problem is, if you set the bar so low, you will get this LFR experience. Tanks are the first to get hit by it; I mean alot would be accomplished by banning all swearwords and caps in LFR. My biggest sigh is that it was a fantastic idea and concept.

[Dakara]

I love to hate LFR... no wait.... I hate to love it.

It serves a purpose for me, but admittedly, with Flex, it's probably not needed. However, if they were to remove it, Flex would need a group finder tool (same as LFR) so all you're really doing is upping the difficulty of LFR.

Some Flex groups are actually worse than LFR's. Insane requirement so the group takes as long as DPS LFR que to fill, and then still encountering clueless players or asshat leaders who are just as clueless. Atleast with LFR, you can jump in jump out, especially if que multiple raids at once.

It really is a tough call for, as much as a long for a return of the TBC days, that would also see me quit WOW as I can't sustain that type of commitment anymore. Quite enjoyed the ICC pug days, and I think we could easily return to those days by simply having Normal (Flex) and Heroic. Too many difficulties really inflates the ilvl's (and thus gear requirement), and then bring back Heroic 5 mans for catch-up gearing. In all honesty, Wrath was the sweet spot, minus the separate 10/25 issues.

My 2c.

[Glyphtics]

LFR is shit. Half the groups you get can't kill bosses because 80% of the raid is terrible / unskilled. Needs to be undertuned to the point where literally any LFR group can kill the boss.