And I think you've done a fine job of expressing your reasons. That being said, I suspect you be misguided in your assessment of the role of LFR in what you're describing.
Did you ever consider the possibility that LFR wasn't to blame (correlation =/= causation)? What is your evidence that LFR is the cause? Did you consider rival explanations for your observed phenomenon?
What you're describing is that LFR has given people a choice. Instead of forcing people to do something they don't really want to do in order to see the content (organised raiding), they've now been given a more palatable alternative (LFR).
The problem you're describing isn't LFR. It's that the type of people you were trying to recruit weren't really keen on raiding in the first place and they were only doing it under duress. Now maybe that suited your objectives, but it certainly doesn't mean that LFR is bad.
It's a bit like a farmer who, for years, had access to a large pool of cheap labour. Until a big factory came along and gave all those people a better deal. And now the farmer is complaining how the factory is bad because it took away all his employees.
I've never bought this argument. I'd agree with @
Twdft's hypothesis that the people running LFR are a different group of people to those of us doing "real" raiding. Honestly, I don't know a single person who has burned themselves out from too much LFR. I know a lot of people who simply avoid LFR.
I would argue that in the vast majority of cases, people who quit "real" raiding for LFR do so because of a problem with real raiding (either they don't enjoy it, they can't commit to the schedule, don't want the commitment etc).
It's like if your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend runs off with someone else, many people will blame the person they ran off with, oblivious to the obvious: that their partner wasn't happy in their existing relationship.
What kind of a disingenuous question is that? How on earth do you think that removing ALL gear rewards from LFR would improve the experience of seeing the content?
The point of LFR has never been just about seeing the content. It's about giving people an opportunity to experience the game more fully. And getting gear from doing content is a core part of the game.
So yeah, I'd be totally against removing all gear from LFR. Because it feels petty and vindictive and spiteful, and frankly there is zero good reason to do it. I totally agree that it's important that LFR gear remains non-mandatory and that no one doing normal/heroic/mythic should ever feel compelled to participate in LFR purely for the gear. But the fact is that this hasn't been an issue
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. How about we remove gear completely from all raiding, and see how popular it is. As long as gear is part of the game, it's totally appropriate that content reward gear proportional to the difficulty of the content. The fact that you can get gear from LFR doesn't necessarily have to be the primary reason people go into LFR, but not being able to get any gear from LFR would be a strong reason to avoid LFR and focus on content from which you can get gear.
Again, look at a real life analogy: People shouldn't be choosing a job based on the amount of money it pays. You should be choosing your job based on how passionate you are about the work. And while I know many people who will accept a lower salary to do what they are passionate about, almost no one will work for free, no matter how much they love their job.
Your argument fails here because you haven't established as fact a link between LFR and encouraging/rewarding the path of least resistance. You've effectively just created a strawman argument.
The unarguable fact is that the path of least resistance is simply to not play at all. You might be able to argue that LFR offers a path of lesser resistance, but the fact that normal, heroic and mythic offer increasingly significant rewards refutes your argument that LFR is encouraging or rewarding this path. What LFR does is to accomodates it. And it does so on the understanding that even though you may want to encourage your players to become better, some simply won't. And allowing them to take the path of lesser resistance is still better than watching them take the path of least resistance and simply not participate at all.
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Clearly you missed the part where I said: "Titanforging is not about giving people a reason to go out and do content that they don't enjoy. It's about taking away the single biggest reason people will avoid doing content that they would otherwise be happy doing."
If you're miserably grinding content just for a chance at a TF upgrade, you're doing it wrong.
You don't know what you're talking about, clearly. The fact that Normal/Heroic are "pushovers" for you doesn't mean that it isn't challenging for other people. Seriously, do I really have to explain this to you?
Anyhow, any guild, be it normal/heroic or mythic can get getting stuck on a "wall" during a raid tier. It's very common and it's a big problem. Basically what it means is that the players have already farmed the preceding bosses to the point where very few, if any upgrade possibilities remain, and yet they just can't seem to beat the next boss.
And I can tell you first hand that this situation, if left unchecked, can be catastophic for a guild. There comes a point where players start to get frustrated. People start turning on each other when someone fails, people quit, etc.
With Titanforging, that same guild may be stuck at a wall, but at least the bosses they are farming will continue to yield upgrades, which means that they will continue getting closer to the kill purely by virtue of better gear.
If you incapable of understanding this concept, I apologise. But it doesn't make it any less valid.
I never said there was. But there is a vast difference between a player deciding to be done with certain content, and the game making that content pointless. If my buddy is putting together a normal pug and asks me to tag along: Without TF I look at the raid and know upfront that I won't get any upgrades. With the next raid coming up tomorrow, I feel I need to at least be doing something productive that could yield an upgrade and help my guild's progress. So I am torn between doing something for fun and doing my chores. With TF there is the possibility of an upgrade. Now I don't need to feel torn.
Why not? The same principle as above applies. And I can even tell you that this has influenced me personally in the past to do some WQs. I can't recall it ever actually paying off with a real upgrade, but at least I am engaging with content rather than trying to find to avoid it in the interests of being more efficient.
And gear is still stratified among players according to the content do. Mythic raiders still have the best gear, heroic raiders still have gear that is better than normal raiders but below mythic etc.
And no, I never said that "facerolling a boss into oblivion should give you a piece of gear titanforged". You're trying to strawman. My argument is that it's ok that the possibility exists, not that it should happen all the time.
You're playing the game wrong. Playing for BiS was always a toxic system because it pretty much forced a bunch of players to burn themselves out by repeating content long after it was fun or necessary, while simultaneously leaving other players, keen to keep going, feeling pointless.
The whole design philosophy now is that you should stop farming for gear at the point where you decide it's enough based on factors like:
1) Have we achieved our objectives for the tier?
2) Do we have enough gear for where we want to be for the start of the next tier?
3) Are people still having fun?
4) Are we on the verge of burnout?
Of course it's not a good feeling to have. But here's a little secret: It's not the game's fault.
When someone calls my point "stupid", it says a lot more about them than my point. Also, the rest of what you wrote in this paragraph is unintelligible. You're trying to make some point that you think is obvious, but it's so poorly written that without substantiation I can't even understand what you're trying to say, let alone why.
You're right in that you shouldn't be worrying about that stuff. So why exactly are you worrying about it?
Seriously dude, you have issues you need to sort out.
If you get a gear piece to drop and it's an upgrade, great, equip it and be happy.
If you get a gear piece to drop and it's not an upgrade, accept that shit happens and move on.
Stop obsessing over getting BiS. If you're a consistent raider you will get some really good gear and that's great, equip it and be happy.
You'll know you're done with the tier when you've cleared all the bosses and you're no longer having fun. TF isn't forcing you to keep coming back because of a possible upgrade. That's something you're doing to yourself out of some kind of obsessive compulsive need. That's what you should be focussing on addressing rather than having pointless fights with people on the internet who could actually teach you a thing or two if you'd just listen.