Frustrating LFR - How do we fix this mentality?

[Vargas]

In all honestly, the smoothest I've seen lfr go usually is when I am copy pasting basic strats into chat during trash before pull. You can't force all 25 people to do the proper mechanics in this scenario unless you luck out, but if you simply try your hardest to contribute to curb as many of the casuals you have to at least be aware of what proper boss mechanics, raid awareness and execution looks like, you can at least move what could have been 10 of 25 people generally knowing what to do, to 17/18 of 25 which should result in a kill. There will always be people who have no clue wtf is going on. Its up to the people who know the fights well to step up and say what they can to help out. This game is a community, and the sooner people contribute on a constructive level whenever possible, your gaming experience should improve dramatically, lfr being only one example of that.

This.

Its not individual players that make LFR harder than it needs to be; its the entire community being lazy and expecting everyone to go in knowing all the fights. The first week the first wing of ToT was open there were people bitching about people not knowing mechanics and saying "this isn't new guys, it came out last week" as if EVERYONE has already done the non-LFR versions. Its not just the "casuals" that people like to blame for WoW's woes; its almost literally everyone who logs into the game is lazy and incredibly impatient.

LFR is 25 complete strangers who's idea of communicating is spamming for recount and trying to say everyone sucks but them. Its not progression and no one will treat it as such, so don't go in expecting progression-level precision and execution. Having said that, if the playerbase was a bit less lazy and was more pro-active in saying "okay for this boss we do this this and this" and calling out mechanics, more people would get the hang of it and lead to less wipes and frustration instead of just sitting back and raging and not helping anything at all.

[Osmeric]

Its not individual players that make LFR harder than it needs to be; its the entire community being lazy and expecting everyone to go in knowing all the fights.

That's not laziness, that's self-interest colliding with group interest.

[Maleric]

The approach that nets them the most profit. Apparently catering to people who don't care about their performance or the other people they are playing with is the best approach according to Blizzard. So there is no reason to fix this 'mentality'.

LFR probably isn't good for the game's long term health. It creates a layer of shit at max level that's likely to turn people away from raiding. Once a player has seen the raid/gotten the loot/dealt with raging jackasses in LFR, they're less likely to go for actual raiding. Especially if they're new and don't understand that the LFR experience isn't really comparable to the experience of doing a raid on normal/heroic. This isn't good for the game, because LFR isn't engaging enough to keep people playing long term. So while LFR provides engaging short term content, I doubt it does much to turn people in to long term subscribers, and actually probably makes people less likely to get in to raiding.

Also, LFR doesn't exist in a vacuum. Tier fourteen was time-wise extremely short, which impacted the normal/heroic content, and I think this was mostly because LFR content doesn't stay fresh anywhere near as long as normal/hard modes.

As far as fixing LFR, that's really never going to happen. LFR wouldn't work if it didn't involve groups of strangers and super easy content, and there are no penalties to prevent people from acting poorly in that situation. People behave at the level they need to.

[stellvia]

I've only been kicked once, thankfully. Also due to raid stupidity, and not my own failure. But I guess it helps that I'm a tank, and raids are usually more hesitant to kick tanks. I also volunteer for raid leading so I'm often Instance Leader as well. Yes cat-herding is annoying, but I'd rather just do it and help the raid finish quickly, than sit back and endure repeated wipes and people leaving. Actually managed to one-shot Ji-kun this week.

Even last week when we suffered maybe 4 wipes on Ji-kun. I told them about how my guild needed 250 attempts to get a first kill on M'uru back in Sunwell and they were amazed. I just don't understand how people can flippantly leave the raid after only 1-2 wipes after waiting an hour in queue. Especially if you're at like the last boss. It's going to be way more time getting back there, than staying.

Funny thing about the one kick, was it was the start of HoF. The OT refused to take the Shield Masters, so instead I have the other adds plus at least one Shield Master on me, and the moment I got stunned I would just get wrecked of course. It also didn't help that the healers were doing something next to nothing. I died like 6x before we even got to Vizier. Then on pull for Vizier I straight up died in the first 15 secs from no heals. Literally the only dmg going out at that point was on me, and I went 12 secs straight with not a single heal and died. So of course they blame me and kick me.

Irony is that I immediately got a fresh raid, got thru Vizier without dying once (OT took Shield Masters), and actually beat the other raid to the Garalon kill. Informing the two baddies that got me kicked of my progress the entire way

[Deleted]

So long as they participated, even if it was just supplying buffs, then yes.

Anything else is arbitrary and unfair.


That's why Determination was made.

ROFL "as long as they supply buffs"..... I don't even know what to say. If we're at that level, where people think they should be rewarded for simply being in the raid, they should go play Pokemon or Farmville. Cause that mentality is that of a child or a a kids soccer team, where everyone gets a medal regardless of whether they won or not.

Grow up, if you want the rewards, you put in the effort. Being afk means ZERO effort and yet you still think those people are entitled to loot lol.

Go farm LFR and have fun with a bunch of afk'ers. Cause in the end, that will take a lot of stacks for you to kill it. I mean, what would you do, if 10 people were afk? You don't think those 10 people should be kicked out or punished by loot ban? Why is it, that it's okay for someone to have that mentality, that they want the rewards but don't want to participate, why is that okay in your eyes?

This is why I don't do LFR, the second I've gotten enough gear on my alts to actually raid on them. And no, LFR is NOT raiding, when people can be afk and still collect loot. Shit mentality that belongs no where in a game where rewards are directly related to effort.

[stellvia]

Its not individual players that make LFR harder than it needs to be; its the entire community being lazy and expecting everyone to go in knowing all the fights.

Yes, there are going to be jerks who expect people to know everything ahead of time. But there is SOME information there available to you without even leaving the game.

The Dungeon Journal.

I consider it VERY little effort to ask someone to take the time to go into the Journal and at least read about what abilities the boss has. They even have nice icons on if its something a Healer needs to watch out for, or a Tank, etc. Especially for only 3 bosses.

There is no excuse for going into a boss fight 100% blind. Or to expect others to hold your hand and explain everything to you, because you're too lazy to take 2 mins to glance over the Dungeon Journal.

[Otimus]

LFR probably isn't good for the game's long term health. It creates a layer of shit at max level that's likely to turn people away from raiding. Once a player has seen the raid/gotten the loot/dealt with raging jackasses in LFR, they're less likely to go for actual raiding. Especially if they're new and don't understand that the LFR experience isn't really comparable to the experience of doing a raid on normal/heroic. This isn't good for the game, because LFR isn't engaging enough to keep people playing long term. So while LFR provides engaging short term content, I doubt it does much to turn people in to long term subscribers, and actually probably makes people less likely to get in to raiding.

Also, LFR doesn't exist in a vacuum. Tier fourteen was time-wise extremely short, which impacted the normal/heroic content, and I think this was mostly because LFR content doesn't stay fresh anywhere near as long as normal/hard modes.

As far as fixing LFR, that's really never going to happen. LFR wouldn't work if it didn't involve groups of strangers and super easy content, and there are no penalties to prevent people from acting poorly in that situation. People behave at the level they need to.

Sorry to break this to you, but raiding has never been popular, and likely never will be popular. There's essentially nothing you can do to real raiding to make it more appealing to the average customer, without destroying what it is. I think a lot of raiders REALLY don't understand how many people simply didn't raid in vanilla, BC, Wotlk, cataclysm, or even now. The social demands (or socializing at all), and the gameplay demands turn off a lot of people who just want to "play a game", or whatever.

[Phookah]

But, honestly, who's to blame for that? Why should you heal a boss? How are you supposed to know?

Blizzard theoretically gives us an immersive game. It should be obvious how to do the fundamental things in the fights.

For example, we shouldn't have to kill dragons by healing them, without some sort of obvious indication. Just like we shouldn't be expected to dispel X Y and Z except for Z because if we dispel Z everyone will die, not without some kind of sign that there is something special going on.

You mean like the giant raid warning that comes up when he goes to day phase that says "HEAL TSU'LONG"? No wai

[eschatological]

Its not individual players that make LFR harder than it needs to be; its the entire community being lazy and expecting everyone to go in knowing all the fights. The first week the first wing of ToT was open there were people bitching about people not knowing mechanics and saying "this isn't new guys, it came out last week" as if EVERYONE has already done the non-LFR versions. Its not just the "casuals" that people like to blame for WoW's woes; its almost literally everyone who logs into the game is lazy and incredibly impatient.

And what happens on LFR Garalon, which I still sometimes see wipes to, because people run into circles, don't know to avoid the people with pheremones, don't know to have a healer out front to heal the pheremone person, etc? That fight has been out since November and people still don't know it. Can we hold them accountable now?

There comes a point in a patch where people should know a fight. I usually set the benchmark at about 6 weeks. Even if you came back right at the beginning of a patch, 6 weeks is more than enough to gear up and have a few of the relevant LFRs under your belt to know what's going on.

The problem is, people go into a fight, don't know what's going on, don't say anything, roll face on the keyboard, end the fight still not knowing what's going on, and then don't bother to find out ever because they think they can win without knowing anything. There's no incentive to learning the fight in LFR. At all. On LFR-Sha last tier, most of the melee would stand in the circle of light with my tank, right click on the boss, and then come back in 10 minutes - because they could win the fight that way and they didn't need to know anything else.

[Otimus]

And what happens on LFR Garalon, which I still sometimes see wipes to, because people run into circles, don't know to avoid the people with pheremones, don't know to have a healer out front to heal the pheremone person, etc? That fight has been out since November and people still don't know it. Can we hold them accountable now?

There comes a point in a patch where people should know a fight. I usually set the benchmark at about 6 weeks. Even if you came back right at the beginning of a patch, 6 weeks is more than enough to gear up and have a few of the relevant LFRs under your belt to know what's going on.

The problem is, people go into a fight, don't know what's going on, don't say anything, roll face on the keyboard, end the fight still not knowing what's going on, and then don't bother to find out ever because they think they can win without knowing anything. There's no incentive to learning the fight in LFR. At all. On LFR-Sha last tier, most of the melee would stand in the circle of light with my tank, right click on the boss, and then come back in 10 minutes - because they could win the fight that way and they didn't need to know anything else.

What if they came back 6 weeks after the patch?

[HardCoder]

LFR probably isn't good for the game's long term health. It creates a layer of shit at max level that's likely to turn people away from raiding.

But, Blizzard would be better off if raiding disappeared from the game, given that the raiding population is so small, so picky, so incestuous, so (melo)dramatic, so exclusive, so hierarchical, so dogmatic, so et cetera.

The reason new players don't want to do organized raiding is that the experience is unpleasant. More unpleasant than LFR for sure.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 10:20 PM ----------

On LFR-Sha last tier, most of the melee would stand in the circle of light with my tank, right click on the boss, and then come back in 10 minutes - because they could win the fight that way and they didn't need to know anything else.

It is a pretty terrible (as in boring) fight for melee. Most melee will get 1-shot during a tank swap if they stand in the circle though.

[Razorice]

Why bother being helpful to people? I just go afk and follow someone everytime I join LFR. That way my nerves stay undamaged and I get loot.

[HardCoder]

Personally I think they should just remove LFR from the game, if people aren't interested in raiding, they probably won't be interested in the artificial version of it either.

It's more like people aren't interested in the real version of it.

Why is it hard to recruit people into a part-time job that pays nothing?

[Maleric]

Sorry to break this to you, but raiding has never been popular, and likely never will be popular. There's essentially nothing you can do to real raiding to make it more appealing to the average customer, without destroying what it is. I think a lot of raiders REALLY don't understand how many people simply didn't raid in vanilla, BC, Wotlk, cataclysm, or even now. The social demands (or socializing at all), and the gameplay demands turn off a lot of people who just want to "play a game", or whatever.

That's certainly the LFR hero narrative, but then the game has also been losing subscribers at a rapid pace since about the time that thinking started influencing game design. It's pretty obvious that raiding supports the game beyond the number of raiders at any given point, based purely on subscriber numbers.

[Zantera]

I agree with what some others have said. The first week or two with a new LFR can be really annoying. A few people who think they know everything are trying stupid tactics and people get mad over failing. Eventually, a few weeks into a new LFR, that shit almost disappears because people are finally learning how the fights work, so there's less shouting/people being powermad going on.

[Schwert]

I stopped doing LFR entirely unless I'm going in with a decent chunk of people from my raid guild;

I literally just cannot stand trying to help people who cannot help themselves anymore.

I started playing before the advent of LFR but I did all the research on fights prior to doing things or just caught on very quickly.
I have indeed tried helping multiple LFR groups before all the way up into ToT but I've given up. Politely pointing out the mechanics work as "x" or that the tank shouldn't be degrading the entire group on Wind Lord for not being able to out DPS him only to be called an Elitist A-Wad because I was using my Fearless title is beyond frustrating.

Why should I bother helping or even spending time with these people?

I like the idea of LFR but it's only catered to the lazy and bad - Not the casuals. These players have ruined what could have been an amazing thing.
The casuals I know are either RPing or doing last tier normal modes and they're perfectly content not doing LFR for the same reasons I won't.

LFR has done nothing to foster community - It has done nothing to allow those who need it to learn how to raid;
I'm now 100% for the sentiment it is nothing more than a loot pinata used to keep subscription numbers up because a vast majority of people playing this game don't want to put any effort into raiding - Which is ruining the MMO Genre as a whole; Not just WoW.
I've tried to like and support it but all I see is damage which could have been avoided if we maybe had an extra raid or two each patch that was designed to be extremely easy for pugs and people had some freakin' patience to watch a tier or so to see content like "back in the day" I never played.

/rant

[Osmeric]

That's certainly the LFR hero narrative, but then the game has also been losing subscribers at a rapid pace since about the time that thinking started influencing game design.

The net losses became large when they tried to move back to a hardcore play style.

If you mean gross, not net, losses, then the game's been experiencing large numbers of those since the beginning. They were just masked by new people joining.

[Maleric]

The net losses became large when they tried to move back to a hardcore play style.

If you mean gross, not net, losses, then the game's been experiencing large numbers of those since the beginning. They were just masked by new people joining.

LFR wasn't implemented until tier thirteen, which was, I believe, near the end of 2011. At no point since then has the game moved back toward encouraging more hardcore play styles.

If you're referring to heroic tuning at the start of Cataclysm, then I agree that that probably cost subscribers, but I also think that's a separate issue because it involved heroics, not raids. Five mans have never been the main event of end game PvE, aside from maybe during early Vanilla, and have never really functioned to keep people interested in the game long term. Whether five mans are easy or hard, there's always additional, more-progressed end game content behind them in the form of raids. In contrast, LFR is positioned as an alternative to raiding, rather than a progression step.

[Osmeric]

LFR wasn't implemented until tier thirteen, which was, I believe, near the end of 2011. At no point since then has the game moved back toward encouraging more hardcore play styles.

If you're referring to heroic tuning at the start of Cataclysm, then I agree that that probably cost subscribers, but I also think that's a separate issue because it involved heroics, not raids.

The majority of the net loss in Cataclysm occurred before LFR came out.

[Otimus]

That's certainly the LFR hero narrative, but then the game has also been losing subscribers at a rapid pace since about the time that thinking started influencing game design. It's pretty obvious that raiding supports the game beyond the number of raiders at any given point, based purely on subscriber numbers.

How do you figure? like, are you assuming the other 85% who aren't raiding, never have raided, and never will raid, are just preparing to raid or something? It's pretty illogical.