LFR: Lowering the bar since Dragon Soul

[Romanthony]

Honestly stop with the LFR bashing if you dont like it, ignore it, its there for people who cant do normal raids. I for one sadly cant join my guild on raid nights due to RL stuff, so LFR allows me to at least see this next raid tier

Yes LFR has its flaws but again if you dont like it, just dont do it.

[Halyon]

Meanwhile, on the Mythic scene side of the spectrum:

LFR's existance justifies the resources spent on the raiding scene. We've had incredibly well-tuned, difficult fights at Mythic ever since it became the highest form of raiding at the end of MoP. Put your money where your mouth is and show us just how "untrue to their names" the highest difficulties are.


Blizzard's original audience couldn't press 1 button woven with auto-attacks in the then ONLY difficulty, so guess it evens out.

This. Just this. But people will still be butthurt because reasons. /shrug

[Torrasque]

That's the beauty of LFR... If you don't like it and you raid at the normal level or higher, you have zero reason to ever touch it or deal with anyone that does because it is an entirely optional mode. If you don't like it, don't play it, it is really that simple.

[kary]

normal groups can be iffy, people want high ilvl requirements which may not be viable on alts. plus, wait time aside, lfr is faster.

Unless you join a raid with no kinda direction, lol.
Generally speaking bosses die slower in LFR despite tuning. You usually get a bunch of sub 1m dps and people who can't use the pod on high council. LFR without carries has always been a very daunting experience.

I can already see how fun/neutered varimathras, coven, aggramar and argus will be.

[Stardrift]

Just fucking do normal/heroic/mythic. Fucking idiot lol

[Shiekyerbooty]

I'd say LFR actually has improved the player base's skill level. I remember lfg and the Icecrown random heroics.... not usuallly fun unless you and your friends made up the biggest part of the five mans.

Anyway, why the hell would anyone care ? What people do in LFR doesn't affect me in the slightest

[YouWillAllAnswerToSithis]

Depending how good or bad someone is, that hasn't changed, except more people have access to raiding.

[meroko]

I like the design change, adding one deadly mechanic and then progressively adding more for each difficulty. Also, Antorus LFR is actually the first fun healing experience I've had in a while, you actually NEED to heal on High Command.

[Rotted]

I agree 100%. Sadly I doubt it will ever change. Blizzard new target audience is mouth breathers who can't press 3 buttons in the correct order.

What annoys me most about people hating on the LFR people and insulting them; They by far are the majority of the playerbase (talking anything from casual mythics to
casual heroic), they are the back bone, the bread and butter of for wow. If you suddenly removed LFR to strike you're ego you'd see a massive dip in subs and as a consequence, later down the line, a drop in content quality and quantity.

[Sansnom]

I don't understand why people get so wrapped up and turned inside out by what other people are doing.

They can't even SEE other people doing LFR, but the simple reality of LFR makes them lose their shit consistently.

Some people cared because being a raider meant being in a special club. The fact they get to see and do something others do not. Some people do care about their perceived status relative to others.

Personally, I have no problems with this, raiding was always a niche and if it stayed a niche.

The problem was the resources it required and there were little else to do beside raids at end game. Had there been more non-raid contents and raiding developments reflects their participation rate, I doubt people would get so worked up over it. Raiders and non-raiders alike.

However, Blizzard wants to make raids, so they are trying to make everyone a raider to justify their development resource allocation.

[Perryn]

I've barely touched LFR in 3 expansions with a couple of exceptions where I've had quests that I for whatever reason forgot to do during regular raids. To be honest, it doesn't affect me, and if it fills a purpose for somebody, then by all means, keep it as is, makes no nevermind to me. Much as I dislike it in concept and hate doing it myself.

[Odinfrost]

Anybody remember launch-day LFR Garalon? Or LFR Durumu? Those were the good ol days.

My most recent memory of this is Archimonde LFR launch day... Good lord all the wipes...

[Jastall]

For your point to be salient, the game would have had to get to the point where they actually cut back on the budget for raids. LFR has been a very cheap sort of "lol shut the fuck up" thrown in without much balancing or even love given to it.


LFR is like handing your baby brother a controller (that isn't even connected to the console) so he could play games with you to shut up your parents.

Yeah, they might actually have the cut the raid budget to focus on questing, dungeons or more zones, shit that tons of players actually do. The vast majority of a raid's budget are art assets and general gameplay design (X boss has Y mechanic implemented in Z way so it works). Tuning is a tiny amount of work compared to that, so LFR is a lot of bang for Blizzard's buck if it gets a lot more people to see raids, and perhaps stay subbed. If there's no such incentive and Blizzard feels that they're throwing (say) 25% of the game's budget on raids that are seen by 10-15% of the playerbase, then yeah maybe someone says that they would do better to relocate the art dudes to making another zone or another dungeon. Suddenly your cool 13 boss raid is now a 8-9 boss raid with the B team of artists and unrefined gameplay mechanics.

Ultimately what we say here is speculation. But given that the people actually working on the game, repeatedly, have said LFR justified throwing resources at raids, I'll believe them over you.

[Thage]

The whole "LFR justifies raids" was something they said to handwave people who were complaining, btw. There's no real merit in that statement.

There is, though. In Cataclysm, the raid team's budget was obviously constrained in a big way. Fewer bosses per tier, a scrapped tier, the mid tier's map was reused for a daily zone, and the end tier that was supposed to send off the expansion with a bang was a handful of recycled maps, minimal alterations to one map, and few enough bosses that you didn't need to bring your toes into the equation (the fewest of any end-tier raid to my memory, at that) while another scrapped raid was made into a five-man dungeon, the only new instance in 4.3 to have a unique map. Then, suddenly, LFR's introduction saw skyrocketing raid attendance, and we're back to strong raid tiers with many bosses, unique environments, strong encounter design, and many bosses per tier with Mists of Pandaria.

Blizzard experimented with letting Normal and Group Finder pick up the slack in WoD by removing tier art and offering extremely basic set bonuses in LFR, but it bombed hard--LFR participation remained upward of 33.3% (repeating, of course) higher than Normal and the Group Finder became infamous among the player base for vastly-overinflated requirements mere days after a tier launched. With Legion, tier art and sets were put back into LFR, and tier art continued to be used for PvP with Ensembles being buyable with Marks of Honor (which drop like candy if you're winning BGs), and judging by queue times participation remains pretty strong in current-tier LFR and we've still got big environments, unique maps, complex fights above LFR, and a healthy number of bosses per tier.

- - - Updated - - -

I like the design change, adding one deadly mechanic and then progressively adding more for each difficulty. Also, Antorus LFR is actually the first fun healing experience I've had in a while, you actually NEED to heal on High Command.

I always held that ToT LFR was its high point; I'm really hopeful for Antorus with all the feedback I've been seeing about it and agree that having one killer mechanic per fight is a good spot for it. Manageable, with wiggle room for the inevitable low skill ceiling, but if too many players are afking while giggling about it on stream (or coming here to brag about being carried), you're not gonna down the boss.

[ohwell]

Meanwhile, on the Mythic scene side of the spectrum:

LFR's existance justifies the resources spent on the raiding scene. We've had incredibly well-tuned, difficult fights at Mythic ever since it became the highest form of raiding at the end of MoP. Put your money where your mouth is and show us just how "untrue to their names" the highest difficulties are.

- - - Updated - - -



Blizzard's original audience couldn't press 1 button woven with auto-attacks in the then ONLY difficulty, so guess it evens out.

Big difference when a game is new and there aren't a ton of add ons telling people how to play the game.

[Otrew]

yeah we need a lot of people leave the game and have less content. mytych is challenged enough

[ohwell]

Shhhhh!!! You'll break their .exes with that level of logic!!

There hasn't been a bit of logic defending LFR yet in this thread....

[taliey]

It takes a special kind of despicable to hate on people they can choose not to interact with and to also advocate being assholes to them.

[Jtbrig7390]

Naw its more like.

LFR Funding the resources going into raiding since Dragon Soul. (Backed up by the many times blizzard said so because it reached a point where not enough people was raiding to justfiy the cost)

Get it correct.

[Achilles55]

What annoys me most about people hating on the LFR people and insulting them; They by far are the majority of the playerbase (talking anything from casual mythics to
casual heroic), they are the back bone, the bread and butter of for wow. If you suddenly removed LFR to strike you're ego you'd see a massive dip in subs and as a consequence, later down the line, a drop in content quality and quantity.

I agree that casual players are the majority but why would removing LFR make them unsub? Casuals survived just fine in Vanilla, BC, wrath, and cata. It's not like LFR is the only gameplay. It's a shitty automated queue where they fumble to press a few buttons while 5 years players carry the other 20. If losing that "experience" makes them unsub then them leaving was probably inevitable anyway.