Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

[Ronduwil]

That it is ok for most people to lag behind raiding in current content. That the best players should be the most prefered customers. That hard content will make people rise to the occasion and get better, and if they don't the devs shouldn't care. That most players will be ok with table scraps after their betters have been served first.

This is what those who subscribe to that philosophy seem to be expecting from WoW:



They should adjust those expectations because this is the only tangible reward they can reasonably expect:

[Harmann]

The guy was preach and while he has a point (you can play as badly as you like and get rewarded to a degree) he is still a massive elitest. I've done every raid mode you can imagine either the vanilla/tbc model the wrath models (up to icc as I quit in toc) came back for cata and lost interest in it after doing some "heroic" raids and currently mega casual in mop. I will be frank. If mop did not have LFR or pet battles and some of the other casual friendly features my self and a lot of my friends would not have come back.

We have odd play times and when we log on simply just want to get on and play not having to schedule our lives around a game anymore. Heroic raiding is a massive time commitment and it often felt like a job. I enjoyed raiding regardless and would not have changed a thing about it back then. The only issue with LFR is probably how quickly its released perhaps staggering it a bit more would help on release but not too much.

As for someone AFKing and getting gear, that happened in pugs in vanilla and in dungeons. All preach did was see if its possible. It is and thats not blizzards fault. Thats players for not noticing and using the tools provided to deal with it (in the video someone spots it and he gets kicked so he proves the point that the game works as intended)

We sound very similar, same circumstances and everything too.

Personally, I think the level of gear from LFR should have been placed in heroic 5 man content, and LFR should have never been made. I just logged on for the first time in a year, and within a matter of hours and up to the ilvl required to run all the LFRs, and then did them all. I didn't know a single thing about any boss fights. I couldn't tell you a single fight mechanic from any of them other than the big guy who charges at walls and is basically a Trial of the Crusader rehash. I honestly could have just been afk, auto attacking the bosses...and from the looks of it, several people were probably doing that because I was beating some as a Mistweaver.

I got a few epics too! However, there was ZERO sense of accomplishment to any of it, ZERO level of challenge, ZERO skill level required...but I suppose I can say one thing; I got to see Throne of Thunder! The experience was so watered down and neutered that I couldn't even care though.

Remember when that Heart of Fear boss was "overtuned" for LFR? You might even wipe on it if the players didn't know what they were doing! Truly an outrage and a disgusting slap in the face to casual players.

I think that's the crux of the issue. That we're treating casual players as bad players, when the whole idea is that it's supposed to not really have much correlation...yet here we are. The "end game" casual content in this game is the single most brainless experience you will ever have in your life. Far easier than any 5 man Heroics they've ever made. Far easier than even the majority of normal 5 man content.

You quite literally just show up once a week, take your shot at getting loot, and try again the next week.

LFR at the very least should have been 10 man content and should have been tuned harder. It's easier to lead a 10 man and coordinate randoms, so it's easily justified to make it along the same difficulty as the Cataclysm Heroics were originally.

Nothing wrong with giving epics to casuals, but there's everything wrong when you don't even need to know how to the play the game or know what's going on to collect them.

[LeperHerring]

Nope, the problem is exactly reversed. Most LFR people are happy to do LFR and are not whining on the forums about it.
On the other hand, a lot of (wannabe) hardcore are butthurt about the fact that someone dares doing the same content on a lesser difficulty level.

Nope, the problem isn't that someone else is doing something on a lesser difficulty. The problem is that I don't get the kind of playstyle that I enjoyed, that is, linear progression raiding. The reason I don't get that is because the introduction of LFR (and 10/25/easy/hard split) requires everything to reset every patch and makes all content completely visible to me the moment the patch hits.

The problem is that some people are not happy with their toys, even if they have a massive pile of them, if someone else has different toys they don't have. By all means put in LFR style braindead content as much as you want, but in addition give me some different content where I can do linear progression raiding and get the TBC style experience.

[Maios]

2) Raiding with only 1 mode of difficulty, and 1 form of raid. Yes im looking at you TBC. Why is it a bad thing to have this content aimed towards players who are on a higher echelon of playing or commitment? Even though only "1%" (insert any other low percentage from thin air here) of the player base raided, the game substantially grew in subscriptions. What was keeping people subscribing, when they "never got to see end game"?

This statement is really bothering me. If exclusive raiding did not deter subscriptions, then why are you assuming that non-exclusive raiding is deterring subscriptions? Are you suggesting that people subscribed because they didn't want to raid? If so, how does changing the raiding model affect subscriptions? Do you honestly believe that if they didn't change the raiding model, we'd still be at 12 million subscriptions and growing?

[yjmark]

LFR at the very least should have been 10 man content and should have been tuned harder. It's easier to lead a 10 man and coordinate randoms, so it's easily justified to make it along the same difficulty as the Cataclysm Heroics were originally.

I think that would have been awesome too.

[Ronduwil]

Nope, the problem isn't that someone else is doing something on a lesser difficulty. The problem is that I don't get the kind of playstyle that I enjoyed, that is, linear progression raiding. The reason I don't get that is because the introduction of LFR (and 10/25/easy/hard split) requires everything to reset every patch and makes all content completely visible to me the moment the patch hits.

That didn't happen with LFR. Blizzard started resetting content when they dropped Firelands in Cataclysm (i.e. prior to LFR) by offering the previous tier's gear for JP and the current tier's gear for VP. Before LFR you didn't have to set foot in any version of the raid, watered down or otherwise. If that's your complaint then you're mistakenly blaming LFR. Gear was actually easier to get prior to LFR because you could just purchase every piece of your tier set except for the helmet outright. The reason they did that was so that returning players could spend a couple of weeks gearing and then join their old friends in current content. Given the choice between going linear and going inclusive, Blizzard opted for inclusive. You can't blame LFR for that.

[Maios]

Nope, the problem isn't that someone else is doing something on a lesser difficulty. The problem is that I don't get the kind of playstyle that I enjoyed, that is, linear progression raiding. The reason I don't get that is because the introduction of LFR (and 10/25/easy/hard split) requires everything to reset every patch and makes all content completely visible to me the moment the patch hits.

The problem is that some people are not happy with their toys, even if they have a massive pile of them, if someone else has different toys they don't have. By all means put in LFR style braindead content as much as you want, but in addition give me some different content where I can do linear progression raiding and get the TBC style experience.

They actually do give you this. You can progress from normal > heroic in every single raid tier without ever joining LFR. If LFR is braindead and still gives you a leg up on your progression, I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Flasks are available to the entire population, but you don't complain about having to "farm with the casuals who don't raid..."

[LeperHerring]

That didn't happen with LFR. Blizzard started resetting content when they dropped Firelands in Cataclysm (i.e. prior to LFR) by offering the previous tier's gear for JP and the current tier's gear for VP.

Actually they started doing it in WotLK. For example, Ulduar was obsoleted by the circus tent patch which allowed you to get superior gear more easily, meaning that instead of progressing through Ulduar you just stopped and jumped to the next tier. The reason they started doing this, of course, was to force people through the expansion on a set schedule so that they could be sold a new one on time.

Before LFR you didn't have to set foot in any version of the raid, watered down or otherwise. If that's your complaint then you're mistakenly blaming LFR. Gear was actually easier to get prior to LFR because you could just purchase every piece of your tier set except for the helmet outright. The reason they did that was so that returning players could spend a couple of weeks gearing and then join their old friends in current content. Given the choice between going linear and going inclusive, Blizzard opted for inclusive. You can't blame LFR for that.

I'm not blaming solely LFR, I'm blaming the whole system change from TBC style to the WotLK style.

[DeadmanWalking]

To be fair I don't think Preach is an elitist, he has an opinion of what made wow great and he made a video and then 20 nutheads held his video up like it was the word of God and tried to convert everyone. If you listen to him on the Convert to Raid podcast he says a few important things, 1. LFR is a good Tool, dont make him out to be an LFR hater. IT has its purpose. 2. A lot of people took his video way out of porportion.

Preach also belongs to 2 Guilds whose charter it is to bring lots of Raider-wanna-be's togeather and teach them how to raid. He belongs to 2!!!! seperate guilds that dust the noob off you and teach you pro tricks, that does not smack of elitism to me.

I like Preach as a person and I like what he gives back to the community. He also has a service where you send him a video of you in action and he gives you a fair critique and ways to improve your role. I do not however agree with him on several points.

But lets not call him an elitist, he's not trying to keep noobs from the content to make himself feel important.

[LeperHerring]

They actually do give you this. You can progress from normal > heroic in every single raid tier without ever joining LFR. If LFR is braindead and still gives you a leg up on your progression, I'm not sure what you're complaining about.

Doing the same crap again on a higher difficulty is not what I mean by "progress". To me that's a grind with very little point or enjoyment. The kind of experience I want is the kind I got in TBC, where it could take weeks between new boss kills, and every time you killed a boss you made real progress (i.e., saw a part of the instance you could not see in any other way through any shortcut). That was what made raiding enjoyable to me. Blizzard seems to mistakenly think seeing their "content" is somehow valuable in itself, which is ridiculous considering the content is mostly recycled, low-poly models in rushed instances with banal lore. The value came from feeling like what you were doing was providing you with meaningful progress.

[Maios]

Actually they started doing it in WotLK. For example, Ulduar was obsoleted by the circus tent patch which allowed you to get superior gear more easily, meaning that instead of progressing through Ulduar you just stopped and jumped to the next this. The reason they started doing this, of course, was to force people through the expansion on a set schedule so that they could be sold a new one on time.

Negative, I went from blues to BWT on my warrior. I went from Kara to BT on both priest and shaman.

[LeperHerring]

I went from Kara to BT on both priest and shaman.

Yes, you were carried after the nerf patch that gave you T6 gear for badges and lifted attunements. It's physically not possible to go straight from Kara to BT before the nerf since you needed to clear the raids in between to do attunements.

[Maios]

Doing the same crap again on a higher difficulty is not what I mean by "progress". To me that's a grind with very little point or enjoyment. The kind of experience I want is the kind I got in TBC, where it could take weeks between new boss kills, and every time you killed a boss you made real progress (i.e., saw a part of the instance you could not see in any other way through any shortcut). That was what made raiding enjoyable to me. Blizzard seems to mistakenly think seeing their "content" is somehow valuable in itself, which is ridiculous considering the content is mostly recycled, low-poly models in rushed instances with banal lore. The value came from feeling like what you were doing was providing you with meaningful progress.

Again, the problem with this is while you're taking 8 months just to finish a raid, what exactly do you expect the rest of the player base to do? Most people I knew who didn't raid either farmed or PvP'd. Do you honestly believe that's a sustainable approach?

[Aquamonkey]

Negative, I went from blues to BWT on my warrior. I went from Kara to BT on both priest and shaman.

A couple people getting boosted by an entire guild/raid is not the same as Blizzard boosting everyone. It's not like entire guilds jumped from blues to SWP.

[Maios]

Yes, you were carried after the nerf patch that gave you T6 gear for badges and lifted attunements. It's physically not possible to go straight from Kara to BT before the nerf since you needed to clear the raids in between to do attunements.

The warrior did the attunements. And if this is the case, then the problem started in TBC instead of Ulduar like you claimed.

[LeperHerring]

Again, the problem with this is while you're taking 8 months just to finish a raid, what exactly do you expect the rest of the player base to do? Most people I knew who didn't raid either farmed or PvP'd. Do you honestly believe that's a sustainable approach?

Like I've stated over, and over, and over, it's perfectly ok to provide other types of content for people that don't want the progression raiding experience. Build them 5 mans or easy 10 mans, or whatever.

[Maios]

Like I've stated over, and over, and over, it's perfectly ok to provide other types of content for people that don't want the progression raiding experience. Build them 5 mans or easy 10 mans, or whatever.

Why not the same 10 man?

[LeperHerring]

The warrior did the attunements. And if this is the case, then the problem started in TBC instead of Ulduar like you claimed.

What do you mean "if this is the case"? It is the case. You can say it started whenever, I don't care. My point is that I want the progression style of TBC (before they started breaking it down with nerfs and "accessibility" nonsense).

[Osmeric]

Like I've stated over, and over, and over, it's perfectly ok to provide other types of content for people that don't want the progression raiding experience. Build them 5 mans or easy 10 mans, or whatever.

And we've pointed out over and over that the remaining raiders would not be numerous enough to justify the construction of raid content on the scale we're currently seeing.

You want to have your cake and eat it too. Your demands ignore the real constraints and tradeoffs that drive the decisions.

[LeperHerring]

Why not the same 10 man?

Because it means there's an easier way to the same content, which destroys the kind of progression feeling I'm talking about. Put in 10 mans or whatever, just build different content specifically designed for them. TBC again was on the right tracks here (although the implementation wasn't that good): provide one 10 man path (Kara -> ZA -> ???) and a different 25 man path (TK/SSC -> MH/BT -> Sunwell).