The future of LFR, ala carte insta 90

[RoKPaNda]

*ahem* SURPRISE! The first and possibly second week after everyone who pre-orders WoD gets their level boosts LFR is a mess.

Why would you assume that the trend would continue? There's no reason to. After the huge boost boom where you got a boost for preordering WoD, the number of boosts will be much smaller now. Yeah, LFR sucked for a week or two, worse than usual, but it WILL stabilize.

[Flaks]

It honestly seems like Blizzard is trying harder and harder to piss of it's dedicated players for the folks that might hop in for a month at most every patch.

[Shiravan]

I think you're very much over-exaggerating the insta 90s in lfr thing. I was in the process of making another legendary and gearing some alts both before and after the insta 90s came, and LFR to me is exactly the same. It's like people now think they have something to blame other than other people just being dickheads.

We still lose half the people to bursting pride, we still have people attacking in defensive stance, we still have people standing on overcharged platforms, and it's not a higher percentage of people doing this either. To me it feels exactly the same.

[Deleted]

That (or similar problems) is why they made the silver proving ground requirement in WoD. (Should have done it now imo.)

Other than that or ilvl it's hard to put requirements on LFR. If they don't want to watch the videos there isn't much you can do about it.

And even then the moochers that actively don't want to participate are impossible to be held out by gear/skill restrictions.

[MoanaLisa]

in most cases its alts of really good players with bad havist of afk alt tab in lfr

It's possible that this would disqualify them from the 'really good players' club in some people's eyes. I think the whole kerfluffle in Raid Finder will blow over in a few weeks except for forums where individual anecdotes merit a thread.

[Leafysong]

I honestly haven't noticed a difference since the boost, always has been and always will be bad due to afkers and people not putting in effort.

[Smudge]

Learn how to play or GTFO

I think it's perfectly fine for people to learn to play by playing. With other people, even. While some of them are doing better than others.

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That (or similar problems) is why they made the silver proving ground requirement in WoD. (Should have done it now imo.)

No.

Proving grounds is such a ridiculously uneven and pointless test at this point.

[Tenjen]

I dunna, LFR is the same hit or miss inane pain it was before like any pug ive had except for a few great ones (and theres still a few great LFR ones here and there)

[Deleted]

Blizzard should really implement a LFR kick system of the 1-3 lowest DPS when a boss gets to the enrage timer (with a safety mode where the kick system is deactivated in case the boss healed himself, like on soo-protectors). You would see less AFK-ing.

[moremana]

Blizz can fix this, very easy too.

If you dont use special abilities, boot, your ass is at loading screen.

[Deleted]

LFR is just too hard for the ilvl threshold. A full raid of lowest ilvl players (without enchants, gems and glyphs) will have a raid experience but have no chance to kill something without the help of those feeling forced to run it to gear up and move on. Which could be good design. But what if most don't pick up any skill along the way because they are being carried (with or without them knowing it)?

At the same time kick protection is limiting any form of selfcontrol in LFR. I don't try and kick that many folks, yet 90% of the time I 'cannot kick this player for another 2 hours' (personal restriction?). AFK players and queue abuse (dps that queue as heals) needs to be reportable offenses. Tho that would only work if blizz would actually add up reports and enforce something. The biggest pleasure I do get out of LFR is to eventually manage to kick that one healer that even admits/trolls about being afk "playing pokemon" (if only 2 bosses after this had been established).

I know it's too late and they won't do anything like it, but LFR should give you an option with what ilvl of folks you want to queue up. So that a 570 can choose to be a carrying player, or just suck up a long queue untill you get a group that is atleast 560ilvl in some shape or form (example ).

All of this can be fixed with social behaviour like guild runs, friends and pugging thru trade. But let's be honest, you won't find a raid looking to pick up a 483 ilvl for anything, not without very carefull planning or sheer stupid luck.

LFR only works in its current form if enough normal raiders are forced to run it.
It would be so refreshing if they GM's would make an occasional appearance in LFR's and hand out some 3 month long account wide 'dungeonfinder/raidfinder' bans. And why not put an MVP like role in place to gather up info for those report. But there is no sign of any kind of enforcement. We can only hope the group finder lives up to expectations. I'm not going to skip on WoD over it, but it will help define player mentality like previous LFR crap has already done and thereby the quality of new players.

[Roggendorf]

Blizzard can't change human nature. (In fact, if they *could* single-handedly eliminate "laziness" and solve the "free rider" problem, they could make a much larger fortune and transform global society.)

[Shamanberry]

Worst case, this is a short-term problem for the next ~6 months until WoD comes out. After that, level 90 is no longer max level, and there's never again a case of someone queuing up for LFR fresh out of the gate.

Also, the problem gets less and less severe as time goes on, since there was naturally a huge surge to get the new sparkly thing. Over time, more of the current wave of characters will get more gear, and there will be fewer freshly-boosted characters as that initial surge dies down to a trickle, and a lower percentage of your raid will be people that are raiding for the first time on that particular character (which, regardless of how you leveled it, is always a complication).


Basically, take a step back, let the worst of it wash over, help people out rather than complaining about it, and remember that what's best for the game long-term (e.g., getting more current and former players to buy the expansion) isn't always what's perfectly ideal for anyone individually in the short term, particularly when we're in deep "kill some time before the beta/expansion" mode and people are looking for something to do.

[eschatological]

I was going to agree with most of these points. My unenchanted, ungemmed, not reforged Rogue and Warlock have been topping meters in LFR toys week while they do legendary quest stuff, when they usually hover around 10 or so.

But now I don't care. Now I can do cross-realm normal on my alts, and eventually Herod. Probably will never step into lfr again this expansion. 520 is more than enough for normal when you have 14/14H experience on your main, and it'll probably go faster too.

[Deleted]

Was somewhat sceptic at the title of the thread but the OP came out as being pretty lucid and clear about his/her points. I agree that there are some problems with putting "fresh" players directly into LFR level and thus resulting in the situations you mentioned. It's not about doing optimal numbers, it's about the attitude and average numbers. There is a clear difference between someone who is trying a non-optimal skill usage and someone who is auto-attacking.

That situation could, in a way, be minimized by making the new player get past a series of challenges from which he could not escape from (like the death knight, the goblin or worgen starting area) and that could provide the player with the mentioned 150 gold, food and gear (the player would start off with a lower ilvl gear). Those challenges should be made so that if you put your mind to it it would take you 10 mins to complete and if you were trying to steamroll it it would take more time. Make the player pick a spec and do a certain "combo" on a dummy; pick another spec and do another "combo"; which did you enjoy more?; are you ready to make a choice? This would make it a (relevant) bit less likely to be totally clueless players in LFR as these challenges would have to be cleared by the players themselves.

Too harsh a challenge to make it mandatory? Make it desirable then! Give players 200gold for completing the challenges and make them optional. Hell, give them 250 and some extra food/mats if they do it fast enough!

Again, very nice constructive post, surely deserves a place in the official foruns. Go for it OP.

[Quickie]

I think it's perfectly fine for people to learn to play by playing. With other people, even. While some of them are doing better than others.

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No.

Proving grounds is such a ridiculously uneven and pointless test at this point.

^ this gets back to a bigger problem. Blizzards attitude with content. They roll out proving grounds, while it isnt balanced. Instead of fixing it, at its current place, they choose to sell level 90 characters, and allow you to just pop into the world. They spend resources, which they say are valuable, they complain about the time it takes to do content, and yet we havent had another heroic dungeon, WoD info is coming out so slow, they do not fix the problems that they have atm, but can release a new item to be purchased, to accrue more money. I dont see the logic in any of their arguments. "dungeons and raids take resources" - You clearly are making money, and have enough time to design proving grounds, how about you fix it, instead of just selling 90's, and lettign people come in, and screw up in LFR which was a costly design as well. To summarize, their desire for more store sells, actually has a reverse effect. maybe I am being to critical here, but I am a business man after all.

[Tharkkun]

TOT lfr has been a steaming pile of crap since it was released last year. It has yet to get better and everytime I decide to go there for runestones and secrets for my alts it's terrible. The free 90's didn't add to this misery, it just never got better. Instead you now have overgeared players able to cheese some of the mechanics such as solo tanking bosses while the other tank just stands there.

SOO seems to be better and I don't understand why because it's a very small ilevel difference barring people's entry.

[land]

Its the same problem with BGs, full of warlocks that can't play in greens Either either awesome (when they are on opposite team) or terrible when in urs.

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Yea yea, LFR sucks, we know.

Don't do it.

The shitty part is that you actually need to do it if you want to get into flex (and eventually normal) raids... especially for alts, lfr loot is a must, plus all the legendary grinding you need to do

[Lukazor]

I boosted a horde DK on another realm to my main ally chars last week and I was quite surprised at how poorly optimised the gear is, so the first thing I had to do was go and reforge to hit and exp cap (started with 3.5% in both). I got myself the 489 2 hander form Timeless Isle, a few Timeless pieces and went into SoO as dps with an ilvl of 489 (had over 496 with tank gear but didn't trust myself to tank SoO yet). I pulled an awesome 75-80k DPS which put me in the top 5 in the group, we had a few wipes but cleared it easy enough. I've never ran LFR SoO much on my main but even with the boosted 90's it didn't seem to make much difference to how it was pre-boosted chars.

LFR has always been full of bad tanking, bad healing, bad dps, afk people and boosted 90's in my experience so far haven't had much of an impact.

[draykorinee]

They should have nerfed LFR with this boost as far as I'm concerned. Its borderline unplayable right now.

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Yea yea, LFR sucks, we know.

Don't do it.

I need to, no one is letting me in flexis with 507