Why exactly are people so anti-LFR?

[Osmeric]

Do you actually think that WildStar would have succeeded if it had just copy and pasted the TBC formula?

There was a game that was closer to trying that: Rift. It ended up on a failure trajectory because the end game was too hard for most who tried it. Hammerknell was a blocker for most guilds in original Rift, and the next expansion just doubled down on that failure. After that there was no saving the game.

Another fun Ghostcrawler tweet from 2013:

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...29787176140800

"people who want challenging content, which historically has never been a huge percentage of our players"

[Deadite]

Also, I'm sure there's gonna be someone who's gonna read my post and be like "Well what if I don't wanna socialize?" and all I have to say about that is that MMOs probably aren't for you in that case. Play a single player RPG if that's the case.

Raider slit there own throats in that regards. You are some guy that has done LFR and think you want to try a higher level of raiding so you pop open LFG and see what pugs are on the go..

BIG DICK DPS!!!! NO BADS!! "Ilvl 50 points above the gear that drops ONLY!!" LINK SOME ABSURD ACHIEVEMENTS!!!!!! 'HALF THE GEAR RESERVED!!!! POG POG POG!!

So you go no ta to that bollocks so you hit up the forums and see that raiders are a bunch of wankers that not only think you are some retard for doing LFR but they want to remove it from the game. So even if you did want to move up the pole the people you want to play with already think you are a piece of shit who can't play the game and all seem to think the are in Method becuase they kille a boss on heroic and look down on a anyone who hasn't.

[Yriel]

1. That's fine. It's better to have a game that caters to its fans than one that caters to everyone and fully satisfies no one.

Yes, i bet Blizzards would really love that.
"Dear Investors, we want our game to be pure and hardcore so we made 85% of the paying playerbase quit. But be assured, only true fans are playing now".
They are a business, after all.

[Celarent]

Yeah, no, that's obviously nonsense. Raid participation in Cataclysm went up massively in 4.3.

I don't think you and I have ever been on different sides of the exclusion-through-difficulty argument, but --

Endgame (heroic/raid) participation cratered between 3.3.5 and 4.1, and stayed low in 4.2. Archived Wowprogress tells the story: on medium and small servers particularly you have so many guilds, then you have just a consolidated, flood-proof few by the end of Firelands.

But LFR was morphine for the injury -- there was plenty of raid activity in Wrath at normal without the need for crossrealm matchmaking or fail-proof design, confirmed in 5.4 with Flex/neo-normal. Flex/neo-normal was the remedy Blizzard needed to apply. LFR wasn't necessary, and of course we can debate over how it's altered the game.

[Poppincaps]

Damn there's a lot of projecting going on in this thread. There's no point arguing if you all are just going to put words in my mouth repeatedly.

[Sansnom]

Imagine actually doing LFR for the "fun"

Sure. Why not. Fun is subjective. Neither you nor I nor anyone has any authority to dictate to others what is considered "fun".

[Dominikas]

The only people who have problems with LFR are casuals themselves. It dissuades them from doing harder content because they try to avoid challenge in general. You get the best gear in the game, the best transmog of the tier, the most challenging and fun experience, an achievement, and top 100 if you're alliance.

The thing stopping you from raiding higher tiers isn't LFR being casual, it's you being casual. Imagine getting so much of a sense of accomplishment from LFR that it dissuades you from doing higher difficulties.

[Tharkkun]

As the poster said, it enables truly lazy behavior in players. If a player experiences raiding through LFR, and decide they want to take the next step into finding a guild and doing normal/heroic, they bring this behavior with them. These are the people guilds have to deal with when they are trying to recruit.

LFR doesn't need to be "hard", but as a team activity it should encourage actually working together as a team. Instead most groups avoid actively saying anything and either zerg the bosses to death with determination stacks or get lucky and have tanks and a few good players who know what they are doing and carry the whole raid to victory.

I'd go as far as to say that behavior already existed. They didn't learn it in LFR. Not to mention bad behavior from a Mythic players point of view could just be a bad player. In a huge number of cases the skill curve between LFR and Mythic players is so huge people think they are being bad/lazy on purpose.

No, they are just flat out bad. Just think like in sports. Most people give the same amount of effort they can mentally give. Talent then kicks in. You either have it or you don't.

[Relapses]

I'd go as far as to say that behavior already existed. They didn't learn it in LFR. Not to mention bad behavior from a Mythic players point of view could just be a bad player. In a huge number of cases the skill curve between LFR and Mythic players is so huge people think they are being bad/lazy on purpose.

No, they are just flat out bad. Just think like in sports. Most people give the same amount of effort they can mentally give. Talent then kicks in. You either have it or you don't.

My biggest gripe is the line between a participation trophy and a minimal level of effort on behalf of the player. You can suck at WoW but imo the LFR shouldn't be a tourist mode version of the raid. It's nice to experience the story but it kind deflates the mystique of the encounter when the biggest obstacle is filling all 25 slots. (There have been a few exceptions to this rule but it's been far easier post-MoP.) I'm all for an easy mode version of the raids but I feel like it's a bit too easy right now. I'm sure Blizzard has data to support its current level of tuning but I still hope eventually they decide to make things a little more difficult.

[puddypounce]

LFR is a hellish nightmare. Its much more difficult than normal for a number of obvious reasons that have nothing to do with tuning. I don't touch it, because I don't have to or want to. There are plenty of alternative options for playing the game. It drops pretty shit gear for the time investment required honestly.

So the real question is who cares about it? If you don't like LFR don't do it. If you do like it because you can't do normal for whatever reason then have fun with it. Why would anyone want blizzard to remove options that are deliberately put in the game to address the needs of a specific segment of players?

Seriously, who cares about LFR. Why people insist on being the morality police on a holy crusade against "laziness' is beyond me.

[rohoz]

Raider slit there own throats in that regards. You are some guy that has done LFR and think you want to try a higher level of raiding so you pop open LFG and see what pugs are on the go..

BIG DICK DPS!!!! NO BADS!! "Ilvl 50 points above the gear that drops ONLY!!" LINK SOME ABSURD ACHIEVEMENTS!!!!!! 'HALF THE GEAR RESERVED!!!! POG POG POG!!

So you go no ta to that bollocks so you hit up the forums and see that raiders are a bunch of wankers that not only think you are some retard for doing LFR but they want to remove it from the game. So even if you did want to move up the pole the people you want to play with already think you are a piece of shit who can't play the game and all seem to think the are in Method becuase they kille a boss on heroic and look down on a anyone who hasn't.

so you joined shit pugs back in 2014? Okay

- - - Updated - - -

My biggest gripe is the line between a participation trophy and a minimal level of effort on behalf of the player. You can suck at WoW but imo the LFR shouldn't be a tourist mode version of the raid. It's nice to experience the story but it kind deflates the mystique of the encounter when the biggest obstacle is filling all 25 slots. (There have been a few exceptions to this rule but it's been far easier post-MoP.) I'm all for an easy mode version of the raids but I feel like it's a bit too easy right now. I'm sure Blizzard has data to support its current level of tuning but I still hope eventually they decide to make things a little more difficult.

normal is plenty easy
people are just too pants-on-head retarded to try to form up a group to do it.

[Fred Skinner]

I think LFR needs a big overhaul. In special adding solo modes. And in special adding game systems which make LFR worthwile for casual gamers.

Well, and adding useful drops to it. A lot to do for blizzard. While i believe they will just continue business and bias as usual in the next expac.

You know, casual gamers are no loud audience. And blizzard seems to listen to the loud voices.

[rohoz]

I think LFR needs a big overhaul. In special adding solo modes. And in special adding game systems which make LFR worthwile for casual gamers.

Well, and adding useful drops to it. A lot to do for blizzard. While i believe they will just continue business and bias as usual in the next expac.

You know, casual gamers are no loud audience. And blizzard seems to listen to the loud voices.

what
you get items appropriate for the difficulty. lfr is about as hard as a m0 due to herding cats, so you get m0 itemlevel gear. you know, m0, the level designed for casualbads.

[Fred Skinner]

what
you get items appropriate for the difficulty. lfr is about as hard as a m0 due to herding cats, so you get m0 itemlevel gear. you know, m0, the level designed for casualbads.

Do you also think world quests should give no character progression?

[rohoz]

Do you also think world quests should give no character progression?

world quests, lfr and m0 give appropriate char progression for their difficulty.

i don't see what that question has to do with any statement.


(and i know by char progression you mean phat purples. do hard content if you want the best purples)

[Fred Skinner]

world quests, lfr and m0 give appropriate char progression for their difficulty.

The difference is that LFR and m0 give no ongoing character progression, while world quests do.

That should change. If you have ilevel 380, you should be able to get gear ilvl 385 from LFR or m0.

I think even heroic dungeons or normal dungeons should give an ongoing character progression, but with way lower drop chances probably.

i don't see what that question has to do with any statement.

I hope you get the idea i talk about an ongoing character progression, which means, playing your content should always be rewarding, no matter what gear level you have. As like world quests.

[Otimus]

LFR is anti-MMO. You're put in a raid with 24 other people you have no connection to since most of them aren't even on your server, and more likely than not you'll never see them again which means they might as well just be 24 NPCs. The content is so brain dead easy that you don't have to really put in any effort which further reinforces the idea that you don't need to interact with the people you are grouped with. Classic proves that if you put challenging content in front of people they will group up and socialize to overcome it.

With Normal difficulty being a thing I don't see any reason why LFR should still exist. Normal is pretty easy and definitely puggable, but challenging enough that finding regular people to run with will be to your benefit. This encourages social interactions which is essential for an MMO. I don't think everyone should do Mythic raiding or anything like that, but I think Blizzard should absolutely encourage players to go into Normal and Heroic, because that's where people join guilds, and make friends, and make the real memories in WoW. LFR deincentivizes players to go into more challenging content where the social interaction happens, which results in them leaving once they do the content they want to do, which is why we're in the state we're in currently. Blizzard has basically removed the "chase" from the game and it's made the population of the game very unstable.

I don't think we should go back to the Classic or BC structure where all the fights only had one difficulty, especially since as others in the thread have stated, raids are one of the primary ways they tell the story. Personally I think Wrath was perfect in this regard during ICC. Incredibly challenging content (Heroic 25), medium level content (Heroic 10 and Normal 25) and easy content (Normal 10). That's basically what we'd have if they dropped LFR with Normal, Heroic, and Mythic. You should have to put in a little bit of effort to raid, but I don't necessarily think you should have to spend your life playing the game in order to raid like in Classic/TBC.

Also, I'm sure there's gonna be someone who's gonna read my post and be like "Well what if I don't wanna socialize?" and all I have to say about that is that MMOs probably aren't for you in that case. Play a single player RPG if that's the case.

IMO, instances at all are anti-MMO. "Large breathing world..... that doesn't matter because we're all going to shove 5-40 of you into tiny instanced little playrooms".

[Relapses]

Seriously, who cares about LFR.

86 pages worth of people?

[Otimus]

....Socializing was an essential part of WoW from Classic to Wrath. You couldn't do the endgame in WoW without socializing. Elite quests required you to group up and those are mostly absent from modern WoW. Rare recipe drops combined with very valuable crafted gear made it so you had to get in contact with certain people on the server who had the recipes and negotiate prices with them. I could keep going, but the point is that the game both encouraged socializing both during leveling and during endgame and also required it for endgame. So, you're just flat out incorrect there.

All of these things that made it so you could effectively play WoW as a single player game are a new thing. MMOs were not like this before things like LFR were introduced.

IMHO, making the leveling experience so soloable in the beginning is the root of the problems. You can't just rip the rug out from under people at the end, and say "now ya gotta play a different game!". That's probably why the game has had so much sub churn over time, IMHO. IMHO, you should have to group to level, or at least it should have been brutally painful to solo level. (and it never was).

[rohoz]

The difference is that LFR and m0 give no ongoing character progression, while world quests do.

That should change. If you have ilevel 380, you should be able to get gear ilvl 385 from LFR or m0.

I think even heroic dungeons or normal dungeons should give an ongoing character progression, but with way lower drop chances probably.



I hope you get the idea i talk about an ongoing character progression, which means, playing your content should always be rewarding, no matter what gear level you have. As like world quests.

world quests have a cap to where you get benefit. world quest progression isn't endless, rofl.

you're talking about il 380 so you're clearly way below the max reward of both sources. wqs cap out at what, 395? with 415 caches sometime?
WQs stop being rewarding after 24hours at 120.

- - - Updated - - -

IMHO, making the leveling experience so soloable in the beginning is the root of the problems. You can't just rip the rug out from under people at the end, and say "now ya gotta play a different game!". That's probably why the game has had so much sub churn over time, IMHO. IMHO, you should have to group to level, or at least it should have been brutally painful to solo level. (and it never was).

yes because everyone is constantly leveling alt #5551123. If you played during TBC/WoTLK you'd know that leveling from 1-max was essentially you begging your guild/friends to help you on quests you couldn't solo.

which is why they added in heirloom gear, LFD that gives you level appropriate dungeons via queue/cross server, constantly reduced the experience required from 1-max, those kinds of things.