Should raid difficulties and LFR be retuned and consolidated?

[MoanaLisa]

LFR is too popular to just abandon it. I like the idea of fixing it to run with NPC's rewarding gold, transmog or some of whatever currency is current. That will detoxify it and put an end to the developer's attempt to delude people that LFR is raiding (it isn't). Of all the difficulties that run in raiding content this is the easiest one to keep.

Consolidate Normal & Heroic. Scrap Mythic and return it to just like it was when it was heroic in Wrath sized at 15 (with some flex for when teams start to outgear it).

For World First—which Blizzard hilariously says they don't support—create a World's First version of the raid that runs at Mythic difficulty (or harder), call it Tournament Level, make it available and use it only for World First and regular tournaments. Leaning towards that being 10-person teams.

Gearing for all non-LFR content should be done through Mythic+ and lower difficulty versions of the raid.

Or just leave it alone. I think raiding is OK right now for raiders but this might shake things up in a way that would be interesting.

[Jastall]

Honestly I think the better solution is as follows

Merge Normal and LFR into 1 queable difficulty with the same ilevel of gear allow things like determination and luck of the draw buffs to remain if you do it as a premade group

Heroic stays the same but the ilvl from heroic is the cap of the season to no matter how much Mythic + you do you will never get above heroic raids ilvl

Mythic raids just drop more heroic gear and is VERY tightly tuned around that gear level and offers prestige cosmetics but the difficulty makes it hard to boost people.

Drops the demand for boosting with normal being queable, heroic being puggable, and Mythic being too hard to boost

Keeps ilvl inflation under control and keeps all the difficultys in place


Perfectly balanced as all should be

Boosting ain't going anywhere with that model. Mythic having prestige cosmetics means it WILL be boosted through for mucho money, and the best gear coming from Heroic means it'll be boosted to hell and back as well, far more than now. Ilvl inflation (which is hardly a problem at all in reality) will also barely change, under the current model it means you're a whole 13 ilvls lower at the end of the expansion than before. Whoopee doo. To say nothing of hurting lower tier guilds by making their preferred difficulty LFR-rank faceroll.


As for the OP, the different difficulties exist for a reason. LFR is the most widely used and has no barrier to entry besides ilvl, Normal is beer league, Heroic is for players who want to push without having the skills/time commitment for Mythic, and Mythic is for the neckbeardiest of neckbeards. Four different audiences, four difficulties. If anyone thinks merging N and H is realistic, get into a Normal pug and observe why it and Heroic are separate.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I will always be of the opinion that the Ulduar design of difficulty was the best iteration. One ‘normal’ difficulty and optional hard modes activated within the raid itself.

This.

Progressing through a raid felt like an accomplishment back then. If you had beaten Kel'thuzad, then you had beaten Kel'thuzad. Simple as that. Nothing to scoff at.

But then heroic was added, so beating the Lich King was no longer prestigious. Nobody cared if you beat him on normal. That was merely a requirement so you can attempt the real deal: Lich King on heroic. Nowadays nobody cares about you beating any raid boss. Not even killing a boss on mythic feels prestigious anymore.

Ulduar's hard modes were a great idea. You don't have to commit to any single difficulty. You don't have to zone in and out of a raid if you want to try a boss on a different difficulty. If you want to fight Mimirion hard then you can do that. If you don't then you don't have to do it. And not every boss had a hard mode; the devs only inserted hard modes where they had ideas for them, whereas nowadays every boss HAS to have extra mechanics on higher difficulties which leads to bad design decisions where either they shoehorn in crap on higher difficulties, or they design it around mythic first and then remove mechanics for lower difficulties and gut the fight.

Also, having extra story locked away on higher difficulties nowadays sucks.

[Osmeric]

This.

Progressing through a raid felt like an accomplishment back then.

This is a complete and obvious nonstarter of an idea. If something feels like an accomplishment it is only because most players can't do it. And that simply won't fly.

[Kalocy Jim]

LFR, Heroic, Mythic. Remove Normal.

LFR justifies the resources put into raid content, and that's that.

What do you say to people who bring up the fact that pre tourist mode, subscriber counts were at the highest, and yet, they produced raid content each and every expansion up to the point where tourist mode was introduced?

[arkanon]

This is a complete and obvious nonstarter of an idea. If something feels like an accomplishment it is only because most players can't do it. And that simply won't fly.

Thats a bit twisted isnt it? People can feel accomplishment from ANYTHING, even things that are very 'easy' for some / most people. Its a very subjective and individual thing.

[Kalocy Jim]

This is a complete and obvious nonstarter of an idea. If something feels like an accomplishment it is only because most players can't do it. And that simply won't fly.

"Can't do it" or "Won't do it?" Big difference between the two.

- - - Updated - - -

Thats a bit twisted isnt it? People can feel accomplishment from ANYTHING, even things that are very 'easy' for some / most people. Its a very subjective and individual thing.

Basically this ^.

[Osmeric]

What do you say to people who bring up the fact that pre tourist mode, subscriber counts were at the highest, and yet, they produced raid content each and every expansion up to the point where tourist mode was introduced?

I say "stop repeating stupid non sequiturs". The implication, that if we had that kind of game again, it would be acceptable, or even that it was acceptable at that time (instead of causing customer loss that they reacted to) is clearly wrong.

[arkanon]

What do you say to people who bring up the fact that pre tourist mode, subscriber counts were at the highest, and yet, they produced raid content each and every expansion up to the point where tourist mode was introduced?

Causation Vs Correlation - they are very different things.

[Osmeric]

"Can't do it" or "Won't do it?" Big difference between the two.

Not really a big difference, if the players quit. Designing the game for the top fringe of players is a ridiculous mistake they've had a hard time moving away from (and no, having lower difficulty levels doesn't mean the game design doesn't revolve around the top players.)

[Kalocy Jim]

Causation Vs Correlation - they are very different things.

Well if the argument is that tourist mode justifies the creation of raids in any given expansion, I think its very relevant to bring that fact up (that raids were produced every expansion before tourist mode was brought into the game)

[catalystical]

What do you say to people who bring up the fact that pre tourist mode, subscriber counts were at the highest, and yet, they produced raid content each and every expansion up to the point where tourist mode was introduced?

Tourist mode didn't push people away. It's keeping people around so we can tour the raids. Without tourist mode, the numbers of WoW would make for even more dire reading.

[Osmeric]

Well if the argument is that tourist mode justifies the creation of raids in any given expansion, I think its very relevant to bring that fact up (that raids were produced every expansion before tourist mode was brought into the game)

And we counter that many things were different between then and now; pointing to presence/absence of LFR as what caused the difference is not evidence-based reasoning. It could be the game was (at least temporarily) successful then despite screwing over the lower end players with the raids.

[Kalocy Jim]

Not really a big difference, if the players quit. Designing the game for the top fringe of players is a ridiculous mistake they've had a hard time moving away from (and no, having lower difficulty levels doesn't mean the game design doesn't revolve around the top players.)

That was never their design philosophy to begin with.

There was a great interview at the 2005 blizzcon by one of the early developers that basically said something like "we are okay that there are things in the game that people don't get to see, the thrill of possibility and that there is unbeaten content out there is what makes the world feel more alive and vibrant"

[RemasteredClassic]

All raids from all previous expansions should be retuned and added to LFR as 5 man content. When that happens, WoW can be my main game again.

[Osmeric]

That was never their design philosophy to begin with.

There was a great interview at the 2005 blizzcon by one of the early developers that basically said something like "we are okay that there are things in the game that people don't get to see, the thrill of possibility and that there is unbeaten content out there is what makes the world feel more alive and vibrant"

Just because a developer has a game design philosophy doesn't mean that philosophy isn't mistaken. I mean, look at what happened to WildStar.

[Kalocy Jim]

And we counter that many things were different between then and now; pointing to presence/absence of LFR as what caused the difference is not evidence-based reasoning. It could be the game was (at least temporarily) successful then despite screwing over the lower end players with the raids.

I'd argue not having a queueable tourist mode for large group content was not "screwing over the lower end players". I feel like all players are capable of doing what they need to if they really wanted to "see the content".

[Accendor]

I've seen some suggestions from people that the 3 raid difficulties and the 1 tourist mode that we have right now is too many.

Do you agree? If so, how should Blizzard go about retuning and possibly reducing the amount of difficulties in the game?

Yes. One difficulty between heroic and current mythic. Remove the rest.

[Kalocy Jim]

Just because a developer has a game design philosophy doesn't mean that philosophy isn't mistaken. I mean, look at what happened to WildStar.

Wildstar never had the clout or long prior MMO history that Warcraft has had.

[Osmeric]

I'd argue not having a queueable tourist mode for large group content was not "screwing over the lower end players". I feel like all players are capable of doing what they need to if they really wanted to "see the content".

Low end players in the first parts of the game had the idea that they'd be able to do raids and see the story if they just played long enough. Eventually they realized this was BS and started to leave. That's why Blizzard moved away from the initial design: it was seriously flawed. Attempts since then to recapture that early design style (Rift did it, for example) have failed, because those players now can recognize when they're being screwed.

Savvy players are making it harder for Blizzard to get away with BS. Some of us recognized how dire SL was going to be from the beginning and left almost immediately. For others, it took a bit longer, but now they're more savvy as well.