Originally Posted by
Ryuda
I like some of this, I wouldn't hate having a reason to do LFR on alts, but I wanted to address the ups and downs of a few things:
1. Proving Grounds 2: Useless Boogaloo
Blizzard tried this with Heroic Dungeons in Warlords. In an effort to try to bridge the gap between the rather severely punishing Cata 5-mans at launch, and the dreadfully easy Mists 5-mans, they tuned the dungeons (slightly) harder than Mists, and enforced a Silver Proving Grounds requirement to queue. The problem was that, as players often do, people simply took the path of least resistance, and learned the muscle memory of the buttons they needed to push, but never *cared* to learn why they were pushing those buttons.
2. Raider Bait
I really don't think this is a good idea, nor would it accomplish what you hope. Trying to drag players from an "unintended" audience into content they don't want to do to begin with is a good way to introduce a toxic environment right from the get-go. Having a portion of the raid being there because they're forced to to stay competitive, rather than because they want to be there is only going to cause issues from moment one.
3. LFR.io
I've actually been a supporter of some kind of well, exactly what you mentioned in the OP. I actually have spoken to a lot of players in LFR, interviewing folks who frequently run it in an effort to see how something like this would work. As expected, the response was somewhat mixed across a spectrum from "Blizzard: Hire this guy" to "Take a Hike". I learned a few things that I think need to be kept in mind when designing any such system.
1) It's hard to assign blame for some mechanics failing. Most common example would be: Player A gets a bomb -> Player A runs away, finds a safe place, and plants themselves there. -> Players B, C, and D all panic with some other thing happening, or just aren't paying enough attention and walk into Player A's Ring. The system would almost need some AI involved to be able to learn what is happening and assign fault. In this case, Player A probably shouldn't have their score paused when they player properly. Such an AI afaik, has not quite been applied to an MMR-esque rating like this.
1.5) In the same vein, superfluously awarding points might not be a great idea, especially for soak mechanics. Again, let's say Mechanic 1 deals 3000 damage to anyone in the circle, or 3000 to the whole raid if nobody gets hit. This damage isn't split. Now, everyone, hungry to get their loot points is going to dogpile into the circle, resulting in the raid taking the same damage as if nobody had soaked, but being rewarded, rather than punished for it.
2)Probably the most important thing I learned from doing my interviews is that the LFR population is much more diverse than people give it credit for. For one, as a personal anecdote, I raided with a person from WotLK until WoD. Prior to around Throne of Thunder, they were one of the best players I had ever met, almost always top 100 in their class. A month or so into ToT, they started to mention that their hands were frequently cramping up to the point of needing to leave the group for the rest of the night sometimes as little as 30 minutes in. They were diagnosed with severe RA. I still keep in touch with this person, and they can perform their DPS rotation, but have a lot of trouble physically dealing with mechanics and dealing damage at the same time. As a result, they often perform middle of the pack, at best, even though this person technically "overgears" LFR. I've interviewed others as well who mentioned things like carpel tunnel/other nerve damage/injuries affecting the hands.
My point being that with a punitive score like this, it has to be forgiving enough to realize that although a bit cliche, everyone has a story, and it tends to be more diverse the lower in difficulty one goes. It's easy for us Mythic raiders to assume all groups are small in scope like us (18-30, usually male, usually a post-secondary student, or with a 9-5 job, life-long videogame nerd, Introvert, did I miss anything?)
Still, I think the basic framework of the score is solid, but I think those few things are always going to prevent that kind of system from every working on anything other than paper.