Actually, I believe it's the other way. I think they build the encounter on heroic, then scale down until it's appropriate - though that is just my opinion.
Honestly, too much time is spent on heroic modes. They should just be rolled back into normal. Blizzard has deemed that multiple raid tiers must all have their own tier of gear, which leads to massive gear inflation - which leads to ridiculous looking numbers, which then requires Blizzard to spend even more time balancing the game (because PvP has to exist too).*snip*
How much developmet time do you think went into all these heroic modes? I also would not be surprised if a lot of the heroic mode abilities were intended to be in normal mode but was scrapped. Every heroic mode is basically the same as normal with 1-2 changes that cant have taken many hours of development time.
I've been playing MMORPGs for 15 years now and I have yet to see why people have this fascination with needing an online game to require large groups of players to provide challenge for them.
If you want to prove how good of a player you are, why not ask for small group content where you aren't reduced to Super Mario mechanics of "dodge this and avoid that" while you play your boiled down class rotation. Wouldn't it be much more challenging to have a stupid hard dungeon/scenario where you had to squeeze every ounce of power and every possible trick out of your class to push your small SWAT team to victory? Much better gauge of skill - and also in a much more consumable format.
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In all my recruiting to WoW, EQ1, Rift, LoTRo, TOR, and probably some other MMOs that I'm forgetting - not one person ever asked me if there was some unbeatable boss in the game.
Usually, they were most interested in if there were people/friends they could play with immediately, versus having to play for some length of time to catch up.
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Why do you need to be "in a massively large group"?
Lol, no.
They did not allow professionals, as in played pro ball or competed in pro sports.
They did not hold regular jobs and become Olympians - not at least the "regular job" that you or I or the normal person would hold. They train 8 to 12 hours a day. I heard of one mother spending 5k a month to train her teenage daughter to become an Olympian. I don't remember if it was figure skating or what area now though.
Did you play during TBC? There was quite a bit of entitlement going on when high rated players wanted to lock all the good PvP Arena gear up for themselves and keep the lesser skilled undergeared so they could be as sources of quick points.
Interesting enough, pvp community which traditionally has almost no entitlement issues gets excited about exclusitivity that can be achieved with skill and commitment, even if they know they most likely won't reach that status.
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The next patch must always put out gear that feels like some modicum of award to even the heroic geared player.
Also inevitably, the heroic raider (for whatever reason) then feels like they should come in to LFR to flex their ePeen and do exponentially more DPS than everyone else. In some cases, this heroic raider also turns into a mouthpiece that constantly berates everyone else for doing pathetic DPS or not doing everything correctly. I'm to the point where I really wish that normal and heroic raid gear scaled down to LFR level while in LFR to stop that crap.
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The genre doesn't survive on raids - it never has. If it did, other MMOs would be similarly sized as WoW - they have just as much or more raid content than WoW at the current patch level at times.
For all the glory that is given to Vanilla WoW, only 4 out of every 10 players had even zoned into Molten Core before TBC launched. That's not killed a boss - shoot, that doesn't even mean they killed the first trash giants. It just means they zoned in, perhaps to just see what the zone portal went to.
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Lol, you think?
Heroic raiding will be one of the first content paths that disappear when subscriptions drop too low.
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It's my opinion - what else would it be?
I think too much time is spent on heroic modes.
I'd expect the kill rate of Garrosh by the end of the expansion to be around 10% in any other game.
But, this is WoW, where people get in the way of people.
37 + (3*7) + (3*7)W/L/T/Death count: Wolf: 0/1/0/1 | Mafia: 1/6/0/7 | TPR: 0/4/1/5SK: 0/1/0/1 | VT: 2/5/2/7 | Cult: 1/0/0/1
Why do you need to be "in a massively large group" to feel like it is meaningful content?
Who?You don't happen to be related to Glorious leader or whatever the username was as I see a pattern there ?
Anyways that issue is laughable at best.
.. and no, the issue is not laughable at best. Other "sports" attempt to minimize disparity between individual participants. Even drag racing uses delayed start timers in an attempt to equalize the difference between someone that heated faster than their opponent (and there is no doubt that many DPSers view themselves as opponents to some degree).
Someone coming into LFR with heroic gear are likely there for two reasons: valor cap (why at this point?) or boast/brag/flex ePeen.
37 + (3*7) + (3*7)W/L/T/Death count: Wolf: 0/1/0/1 | Mafia: 1/6/0/7 | TPR: 0/4/1/5SK: 0/1/0/1 | VT: 2/5/2/7 | Cult: 1/0/0/1
Sports what ? Am I supposed to take that in any way serious ?
On the first issue I never mentioned anything along the lines of having to be in a massively large group although playing with more than 1 other person in a massively multiplayer online game definitely doesn't feel wrong to me. My post wasn't about that though.
To add a reason as you really seem to be unable to come up with one that isn't negative - I recently went with a girlfriend through a couple of those lfr bosses to get her some gear for flex. I know that having friends and being social is a hard to grasp concept nowadays but there is at least one good reason to go with my gear for a round of lfr that isn't about boasting "epeen" but just about making sure that she didn't spend her entire time playing in there alone with randoms.
Last edited by cFortyfive; 2014-01-10 at 05:39 AM.
37 + (3*7) + (3*7)W/L/T/Death count: Wolf: 0/1/0/1 | Mafia: 1/6/0/7 | TPR: 0/4/1/5SK: 0/1/0/1 | VT: 2/5/2/7 | Cult: 1/0/0/1
I said, "likely are" - I didn't say it was set in stone for every heroic raider that enters LFR.
You aren't denying that some number of heroic raiders do as I said, are you? It's not much different than the Vanilla "pretend to AFK with purples at the mailbox" really.
I mentioned the sports comparison because even though "its just LFR", that is somebody else's content. Some heroic geared raider in there doing 3x to 6x their DPS can be confusing as they ask, "man - am I doing something wrong?"
Also, you get a few heroic geared raiders in the same LFR, each doing the combined DPS of 5 DPSers and it makes the boss inordinately easy, which leads to even more bantering about on forums about how LFR is roflface easy - yet, in SoO LFR - there still seems to be plenty of wipes going on, even at 4 months in. Perhaps it's not quite so roflface easy when everyone is in the gear LFR was designed for.
Last edited by Firebert; 2014-01-10 at 05:53 AM.
37 + (3*7) + (3*7)W/L/T/Death count: Wolf: 0/1/0/1 | Mafia: 1/6/0/7 | TPR: 0/4/1/5SK: 0/1/0/1 | VT: 2/5/2/7 | Cult: 1/0/0/1
I am unaware of players being able to remove content from the game. Is that some new spell warlocks got with the green fire quest?
Green Grinch - The warlock uses his powers of destruction and demonology to disable the dungeon finder for 13 random players on his server.
I think he is referring to earlier MoP raids and how people have stopped queuing for them after they finished that part of the Wrathion chain - which lead to longer queue times. In a way, that is them removing the ability to do said content since it requires 24 other players and wasn't designed or modified to be done with smaller groups of players.
Just need 13 random other players from his server, eh? Specific classes, roles, levels, itemlevels and skill ability aren't necessary, eh? Just 13 other random dudes.
Green Grinch - The warlock uses his powers of destruction and demonology to disable the dungeon finder for 13 random players on his server.
Gotcha.
Last edited by Raeln; 2014-01-10 at 05:53 AM.
Well in that case, should that not be an issue of Blizzard having a poor design in making previous tiers irrelevant when the next tier comes out?
I have not rly queued up for any other T14 LFR other than one ToES to get the legendary a few months ago on an alt, but is there really no queues for them anymore? Atleast then it was queuable. Either way you can always make a normal run if LFR does not work as that works very well cross realm. If what you are saying is true perhaps the usefulness of the LFR tool should be evaluated, is it really worth development time developing a tool that stops working after a few months (presuming what you say about no queues is true ofc).
That sounds super awesome I want that.
The largest part of the population in lfr doesn't care the slightest bit about their performance or even their presence at the keyboard. Also the average amount of heroic raiders in full gear per lfr group is way below one so how is that significant to any extent. Please.
What am I supposed to deny ? That there are douches on the internet ? No way. Who cares what kind of content they are doing in whatever game. Again I see the pattern here.
Last edited by cFortyfive; 2014-01-10 at 05:58 AM.
Whenever I go into LFR its not to brag or flex, its because either
A) I want a pet from one of the bosses
B) Valor (surprisingly enough, only raiding doesnt get enough valor fast to upgrade stufd)
C) Help a friend with a fast queue healing
D) theres the satchel reward
E) Wanting sha crystals for selling
So I would say youre incorrect, because I doubt any sane person would want to wade into RF just to brag.
"El Psy Kongroo!" Hearthstone Moderator
It's just not that easy to "make a pug" for everything, especially on your own time schedule.
LFR works as well as it does because it pulls from the entire battlegroup. I happen to be on a heavy Horde server, so I have plenty of pug action going on if I cared; however, there are some REALLY underpopulated factions on servers out there. On my server, there ain't Alliance raiding. Ain't happening unless it's in LFR or your schedule lines up perfectly with that one guild.
That is the problem with raiding in general when it requires specific roles/classes/whatever. It's not just about having the SKEELS necessary but you have to be on the right server or pay to move to the right server and find the right guild with the right schedule for you. On top of that all, they have to have personalities that are acceptable to you overall for you to enjoy the hours you spend raiding.
That sir, adds up to a large number of variables to line up before raiding can even be possible or enjoyable for a single player. That is why LFR is so attractive to so many players.
Now, if raiding was just a 25man scenario - in which you just had to pick up 13 or 9 or 24 other random dudes and classes/roles/level/itemlevel didn't matter - then raiding would likely attract more warm bodies. That is not what the elite want though - they lambast LFR left and right and that still requires some modicum of role and gear.
It doesn't go both ways - Blizzard has pretty much spoken from their actions. LFR is here to stay because that gets them the content participation numbers they need to convince their executives that dumping mega dollars into raiding is worth it. You get heroic modes for you and your 0.23% of the playerbase because they have still been able to hide it in the wash - the rest (in varying degrees) get lesser tiers while wondering why you are obliterating them on their DPS meter in their content tier.