Why exactly are people so anti-LFR?

[12yoPlayedSinceClassic]

Wrong.

This thread is filled with subjective opinions, you're not more right than any other person in this thread.

You can be subjective AND factual. I disagree with any subjective and biased opinion. And this thread is basicly all about that.

The "Remove LFR" argument is the biggest BS in the WoW community. You can't back it up with any evidence of resolution. In fact - the biggest argument for LFR, is that the biggest group of people are playing it. This is a fact.

Once again the small group of special snowflakes who need to be seen and heard. And thats my opinion.

[ifrah]

They want to be a special snowflake afking in stormwind while showin off their "hard" earned raidgear.

The first reply sums it all. You don't like LFR? Don't do it. Was it hard, no? Oh yeah, but the fanclub inspecting you at the IF bridge, or wherever... they are all gone. Sucks to invest your life in this game, doesn't it?

[MoanaLisa]

It doesnt prove "LFR was created to stop the massive sub losses" which is what i believe.

LFR exists for many reasons some that were explained to players; others that are internal to Blizzard and their perception of what's required to continue to invest in content.

There's a very strong argument that LFR was released early and unfinished to slow or stop Cataclysm's sub losses. That may or may not be true. I tend to think it is. I don't particularly believe that it is meant to stop any of the game's losses at all. At best it might extend a subscription for another month. I still see that as a "loss". Others may disagree. People who use LFR regularly are much more likely to be kept around by a strong world design than by repeated runs of a simplistic raid instance.

[kaminaris]

That's actually not at all what I said. I said it's harder to get away with those kinds of actions. In a smaller group of people, it's also easier to get recognized for good actions.

It's not hard at all, trust me, if some dude is asshole then he will be asshole even in group of 2 people.

Yes, toxic people will still be toxic. But their actions are more likely to have real consequences in a single-server community. I'm not wearing rose-tinted goggles here. People were still shitty even in Vanilla. But those people got remembered, and often didn't get groups or loot without resorting to being a ninja. And even that got remembered. There were many people that acted this way on my PVP server(Daggerspine) who eventually had to start over or transfer to another server because their name was completely ruined.

They don't care, toxic people have fun with pissing other players, ganking lowbies and other solo activities that can piss people off.

Is this a perfect solution? Of course not. But it's something that's definitely lacking in a cross-realm environment.

I see it complete opposite, server-locking was disease, especially for servers that were slowly dying out. Cross-server literally saved them.
And saved me from picking up team from limited player pool.

As I've explained: It makes it easier to recognize people, both good and bad.

Why would I care about recognizing people? If I want to recognize people I join guild or use some specific "community". Then I don't pick players from outside of it, simple as that. Unless I wanna go full braindead mode for braindead activity and pick anyone who listed first.

This is absolutely not true, or at the very least is extremely hyperbolic, especially with flexible raid sizes.

Yes it is true, flexible raid size doesn't save you if nobody wants to join your group. With crossrealm I have much higher chance to create a group for either older raid (which would be straight up impossible with server lock) or other not-so-popular activity. Few months ago I wanted to go Uldir mythic, struggled really hard to assemble group. I imagine with server lock this would never work.

"Can't" or "Won't"?

Can't, its literally impossible for me to create 5 different toons on 5 servers and level them up. Straight up impossible.

As I said before, there are lots of tools to move around servers in order to meet up with your friends. If you don't want to use them, that's a problem which is as much you as it is the game or the service.

Classic doesn't have these "tools", you are bound to server.

It's not so much that the entire questing experience wasn't mostly solo, but rather that mob health and damage was high enough to make grouping more appealing, and often time more rewarding. This is something that's generally missing from more modern WoW expansions. Sure...you CAN group. But there's no real benefit. And the grouping that does happen is for raw efficiency via a WQ auto-group addon.

Undergeared people still create groups for boss WQs cause it's appealing to have more dpses, same as before. Once you get gear it becomes trivial.

[Relapses]

LFR exists for many reasons some that were explained to players; others that are internal to Blizzard and their perception of what's required to continue to invest in content.

There's a very strong argument that LFR was released early and unfinished to slow or stop Cataclysm's sub losses. That may or may not be true. I tend to think it is. I don't particularly believe that it is meant to stop any of the game's losses at all. At best it might extend a subscription for another month. I still see that as a "loss". Others may disagree. People who use LFR regularly are much more likely to be kept around by a strong world design than by repeated runs of a simplistic raid instance.

I'd argue a different point: If the LFR (or something like it) hadn't been released and another triple-A MMO had released such a feature there's a very real possibility we'd be posting on that game's forum right now.

Perhaps it's a bit of a revisionist theory since we know now that WoW is practically immortal but I've always posited that the reason for that immortality is exactly what a lot of people love to bitch about this forum: The changes players love to associate with sub losses. (GC touched on this much more eloquently than I ever could here.)

[Hittion]

I'd argue a different point: If the LFR (or something like it) hadn't been released and another triple-A MMO had released such a feature there's a very real possibility we'd be posting on that game's forum right now.

Perhaps it's a bit of a revisionist theory since we know now that WoW is practically immortal but I've always posited that the reason for that immortality is exactly what a lot of people love to bitch about this forum: The changes players love to associate with sub losses. (GC touched on this much more eloquently than I ever could here.)

I doubt it. I think people want accessible games in the sense of no exp loss on death, permanent equipment loss or excessive grinding. I think when they starting handing out free gear in sunwell and later in wrath when they first started to lower the output gap between between the best and the worst players ( if you look up the dot snap shotting post from back then it goes into more detail) is when they went to far.

Retail wow isn't really much of a rpg anymore. It resembles a Facebook collection game more. LFR didn't start the trend and I would argue it wasn't the biggest culprit but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. The herald that the decay had sunk in deep.

[Eldar45]

Because it adds an un-necessary inflation on gear level. With it you need 4 raid difficulties instead of three. In all honesty I would prefer if they went back to one or two raid difficulties.

[MoanaLisa]

I doubt it. I think people want accessible games in the sense of no exp loss on death, permanent equipment loss or excessive grinding. I think when they starting handing out free gear in sunwell and later in wrath when they first started to lower the output gap between between the best and the worst players ( if you look up the dot snap shotting post from back then it goes into more detail) is when they went to far.

You overestimate the typical casual player I think. Easy accessibility to gear and content is important if you play just a few weeks or months a year or just a couple of times a week. Your post implies that the kind of player who was around for Sunwell has much of anything to do with the player of today. I don't believe they do. You may hate it but the game is firmly catering to part-time players who want to keep up without logging on every day or even every week. Whatever it's original purpose was LFR fits precisely into the mold of that sort of player.

I used to think I was something of a minority in that...I think that no longer. Dedicated raiders and every day players while they rule here in this little echo chamber are the exception rather than the rule in other, larger communities. The design and all the rest of it points directly to very casual players. World quests aren't truly much of a problem if you're only logging on for a few hours on weekends. Neither is grinding out rep. That comes easily enough if you're patient. I rarely play more than twice a week and while I wasn't even close to having flying when everyone else was pursuing it I have it now and most reputations that I need are done to the extent they need to be.

The game is not for the hardcore any longer except for PVP, high M+ keys and Mythic raiding.

[Osmeric]

I doubt it. I think people want accessible games in the sense of no exp loss on death, permanent equipment loss or excessive grinding. I think when they starting handing out free gear in sunwell and later in wrath when they first started to lower the output gap between between the best and the worst players ( if you look up the dot snap shotting post from back then it goes into more detail) is when they went to far.

So, you think the not-best players are happy because the best players would be rewarded and they would not?

ANY player is going to feel cheesed if they are not getting their rewards. They will feel, and rightly, that the game designers really don't care if they keep playing. Their response will be a big FU to Blizzard and leaving to go do something else. So any game design is going to at least have to shower the fat middle of the player distribution with rewards. And that fat middle is not very good at all. That fat middle wasn't able to handle normal mode in the first parts of MoP, for example.

Beyond that, what's the size of the below average population that couldn't even do the current Normal? If that group is larger than the set of complainers like yourself, then Blizzard's rational decision would be to tell YOU to fuck off, not them.

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Because it adds an un-necessary inflation on gear level. With it you need 4 raid difficulties instead of three. In all honesty I would prefer if they went back to one or two raid difficulties.

How does it add gear inflation? The ilvl bump from one tier to the next doesn't depend on the number of raid difficulties.

[Big Thanks]

So, you think the not-best players are happy because the best players would be rewarded and they would not?

ANY player is going to feel cheesed if they are not getting their rewards. They will feel, and rightly, that the game designers really don't care if they keep playing. Their response will be a big FU to Blizzard and leaving to go do something else. So any game design is going to at least have to shower the fat middle of the player distribution with rewards. And that fat middle is not very good at all. That fat middle wasn't able to handle normal mode in the first parts of MoP, for example.

Beyond that, what's the size of the below average population that couldn't even do the current Normal? If that group is larger than the set of complainers like yourself, then Blizzard's rational decision would be to tell YOU to fuck off, not them.

What exactly are you proposing here? LFR gives crap rewards as it is right now.

I dont understand your post. Are you saying we "should" give better gear to casuals? Wouldnt that break the entire reward structure?

[Osmeric]

What exactly are you proposing here? LFR gives crap rewards as it is right now.

I dont understand your post. Are you saying we "should" give better gear to casuals? Wouldnt that break the entire reward structure?

I propose Blizzard, and you, should understand which side Activision-Blizzard's bread is buttered on. It's not catering to the best players.

If the reward structure you want implies that most players are unhappy, then that reward structure is obviously not workable, and should be thrown in the trash. The point of the game isn't to reward virtue, it's to retain subs.

[Big Thanks]

I propose Blizzard, and you, should understand which side Activision-Blizzard's bread is buttered on. It's not catering to the best players.

If the reward structure you want implies that most players are unhappy, then that reward structure is obviously not workable, and should be thrown in the trash. The point of the game isn't to reward virtue, it's to retain subs.

Woah woah woah, that pretty dangerous talk you have there mister

That mentality throws to the trash any kind of "personality" this videogame may have.
Im lacking the words right now to explain...give me a sec

When the main objective of the game is to "retain subs" and not to maintain the "integrity" and "charisma" to appeal a certain audience...thats when things go downwards.

The game must have some kind of integrity...always.

[Yriel]

The game is not for the hardcore any longer except for PVP, high M+ keys and Mythic raiding.

Any longer? When was it ever different?
Even in Vanilla a small minority of hardcores raided and pvped and the rest leveled alts, played dungeons, got their T0.5 set and so on.

Retail wow isn't really much of a rpg anymore.

Would you be so kind and define "rpg" for me?

[Hittion]

You overestimate the typical casual player I think. Easy accessibility to gear and content is important if you play just a few weeks or months a year or just a couple of times a week. Your post implies that the kind of player who was around for Sunwell has much of anything to do with the player of today. I don't believe they do. You may hate it but the game is firmly catering to part-time players who want to keep up without logging on every day or even every week. Whatever it's original purpose was LFR fits precisely into the mold of that sort of player.

I used to think I was something of a minority in that...I think that no longer. Dedicated raiders and every day players while they rule here in this little echo chamber are the exception rather than the rule in other, larger communities. The design and all the rest of it points directly to very casual players. World quests aren't truly much of a problem if you're only logging on for a few hours on weekends. Neither is grinding out rep. That comes easily enough if you're patient. I rarely play more than twice a week and while I wasn't even close to having flying when everyone else was pursuing it I have it now and most reputations that I need are done to the extent they need to be.

The game is not for the hardcore any longer except for PVP, high M+ keys and Mythic raiding.

Your right though I disagree that the casual player as they are called are anywhere as numerous as claimed to be. I believe that those are or at least were the loud minority for the longest time until the game changed more and more to the point of chasing off everyone who didn't want the hardest or easiest of content.

I think classic points to this. I think blizzard is the prime example of not knowing their own audience and only stumbling onto success by happen chance. I never get the " trust blizzard knows best " folks after heroes, immortal, and the overwatch league.

I think people wanted to game to change as they changed rather then naturally moving on and in doing so ruined much of it.

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So, you think the not-best players are happy because the best players would be rewarded and they would not?

ANY player is going to feel cheesed if they are not getting their rewards. They will feel, and rightly, that the game designers really don't care if they keep playing. Their response will be a big FU to Blizzard and leaving to go do something else. So any game design is going to at least have to shower the fat middle of the player distribution with rewards. And that fat middle is not very good at all. That fat middle wasn't able to handle normal mode in the first parts of MoP, for example.

Beyond that, what's the size of the below average population that couldn't even do the current Normal? If that group is larger than the set of complainers like yourself, then Blizzard's rational decision would be to tell YOU to fuck off, not them.

- - - Updated - - -



How does it add gear inflation? The ilvl bump from one tier to the next doesn't depend on the number of raid difficulties.

What your describing isnt a rpg it's a collector game one that even mario is to difficult to fit... Letting players instantly crush content wasn't a good thing it just destroyed the mid game for the vaste majority of players so entitled twats felt satisfied for 2 seconds before yelling for more.

A game that just rewards you for nothing isn't a compelling game.

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Any longer? When was it ever different?
Even in Vanilla a small minority of hardcores raided and pvped and the rest leveled alts, played dungeons, got their T0.5 set and so on.


Would you be so kind and define "rpg" for me?

Role playing game. Dnd, baldur's gate final fantasy.

Imagine any of those games working via wows reward logic and it breaks the game. There is a reason why you can't get the best gear from farming the tutorial levels and it's one wow has forgotten.

[StovnZJ]

Because it gives you a false sense of accomplishment, that will lower your ambitions to actually do the content in the appropriate way: heroic/mythic with a group of friends.

This is probably the best reason why people don't like it. I personally dont care about LFR aside from it just being another version of LFG which DOES kill the social aspect of the game.

I was speaking with a friend of mine on this same topic and they brought up a point about how Epics shouldn't be so easy to get.. and like.. I get it.. but that mentality doesn't make sense when you have lets say.. 380 epics and 430 epics... sure they are both epics.. but we arent stupid and can clearly see which one is better and I refuse that a color of an item should have more significance than the stats on the item.

The other point mentioned in this is about the lack of ambition to do the fights the "Right" way.. Yeah it can do that.. but it only does that to people who dont care in the first place so why should it matter to the rest of us. We join guilds of like minded people.. who cares if a million terrible players have no ambition to move onto the harder modes when they wouldn't offer anything significant to your raid group anyway...

Remove Titan forging and the issues with LFR aside from killing the social aspect of the game go away. Oh and bring back masterlooter for guild runs.

[Yriel]

Role playing game. Dnd, baldur's gate final fantasy.

Imagine any of those games working via wows reward logic and it breaks the game. There is a reason why you can't get the best gear from farming the tutorial levels and it's one wow has forgotten.

By that logic every of our characters has saved Azeroth countless times, is probably still the leader of his entire class, killed gods and so on. So i think from an rpg perspective they deserve all the loot they get from where ever they get it.
Plus killing Azshara in easymode is still killing Azshara story-wise so again, they deserve the loot.
It's not like LFR sends you into a cellar to kill rats.

The rpg argument is ridiculous.

[rrayy]

This is probably the best reason why people don't like it. I personally dont care about LFR aside from it just being another version of LFG which DOES kill the social aspect of the game.

I was speaking with a friend of mine on this same topic and they brought up a point about how Epics shouldn't be so easy to get.. and like.. I get it.. but that mentality doesn't make sense when you have lets say.. 380 epics and 430 epics... sure they are both epics.. but we arent stupid and can clearly see which one is better and I refuse that a color of an item should have more significance than the stats on the item.

The other point mentioned in this is about the lack of ambition to do the fights the "Right" way.. Yeah it can do that.. but it only does that to people who dont care in the first place so why should it matter to the rest of us. We join guilds of like minded people.. who cares if a million terrible players have no ambition to move onto the harder modes when they wouldn't offer anything significant to your raid group anyway...

Remove Titan forging and the issues with LFR aside from killing the social aspect of the game go away. Oh and bring back masterlooter for guild runs.

It does not kill the social aspect of the game. Maike a group in LFG and be social all you want. LFR has no bearing on that. The only thing that is killing the social aspect is the players themselves. You cannot force players to be social if they do not want to be. This myth about game features killing the social aspect needs to stop and go away.

[Hittion]

By that logic every of our characters has saved Azeroth countless times, is probably still the leader of his entire class, killed gods and so on. So i think from an rpg perspective they deserve all the loot they get from where ever they get it.
Plus killing Azshara in easymode is still killing Azshara story-wise so again, they deserve the loot.
It's not like LFR sends you into a cellar to kill rats.

The rpg argument is ridiculous.

Except it isnt and you know it isn't. No game works as WoW has and it relies on the excuse that the game is old to handwave away the problems with a design philosophy that only offers content for the best and worst of its player base.

Linear progression must be restored the concept of participation trophies must be abolished.

[rrayy]

Except it isnt and you know it isn't. No game works as WoW has and it relies on the excuse that the game is old to handwave away the problems with a design philosophy that only offers content for the best and worst of its player base.

Linear progression must be restored the concept of participation trophies must be abolished.

Then the game dies becuse players will quit. If they had kept the game for "special snowflakes" the way you want, it would have died yeas ago. Evolving the way they did means the game still exists 15 years later.

[Hittion]

Then the game dies becuse players will quit. If they had kept the game for "special snowflakes" the way you want, it would have died yeas ago. Evolving the way they did means the game still exists 15 years later.

Prove it.

Prove that getting rid of the middle tiers of content helped the game by making it cater to extreme ends of the player base only. We have the proof that bfa didn't work and given classics explosive launch it acts as pretty stark rebuttal...

You keep talking about all the people it kept but were exactly are they.