why are lfr and flex raid such a big deal

[Aschark]

Please learn how to write coherently, and not butcher ellipses.

[Deleted]

Let me see if I get this right:

It is between 2005 and 2012. Under 500 000 raid for most of the time. Depending on the year that you look at subs, we have an average of 9 million paying subs

Soooo...if my math isn't amazingly bad, around 7% of the players raid. In comes LFR and the participation in raiding quadruples (Blizzard stated that in DS the amount of people raiding went from 500 000 pre LFR to 2 million in LFR)

So now we are at 25% people participating in raiding and 75% not. Yet LFR destroys "the community"? Yeah right. Funny that. So everyone turned into mindless asshat zombies because a new tool was introduced? perfectly fine players who knew how to behave? An intact community, they all decided to be bastards because a new tool was introduced?

Players raiding =/= community.

How many friends have you made in LFR? How many persons have you actually talked to in LFR after your LFR run was completed?
How often do people actually talk to eachother inside LFR? (except for blaming other people for wipes / sucking or asking for vote kicks).

The problem is that everyone is completely anomynous and how you play has no future effects on you, since even if you play bad you complete the task and you will be able to complete it the next, and the next, and the next week while being completely afk. Basically, it encourages 0 player interaction. Fairly obvious this is not healthy for the community.

Or are you seriously saying that the community improved from LFR?

[Silversorrow]

My guild only raids 2 night a week for 3 hours at a time and we are 12/12 Normal 25 man, starting heroics this week. Don't need to raid a ton to progress.

[Bigbamboozal]

I dont think the problem people is having is that people want to be special snowflakes.

The problem is rather that LFR is destroying the community and encouraging people to play like shit.

The problem with the legendary chain I do not think is about LFR/Flex/Normal, rather the design of the chain itself being just horrible. That said, personally I would prefer not being able to get legendary parts from the chain since it is annoying having to queue to LFR if you sat out on a boss in the normal raid. But that is just me being egotistical.

Okay, lets have a look at that....My question for you is: What type of player is playing like shit in LFR? My guess....people who are going through for the first time, AND people who are 'too good for LFR' making life suck for others. So noobs, and (ta-da!) hc raiders with a bad tude.
So I guess really, it's the community's to own. (be a part of the solution, stop alt tabbing to facebook and play)
Yes, you CAN cheese it. But if that bothers you, DON'T.
It really is that simple.
No one is making you hit the join queue button.
You CAN make a raid group and do normal. You CAN pug it. OH YES YOU CAN. All it takes, is for you to get off your ass and do it.

Life has no remote control, if you don't like it, get up and change it.
(sorry, that's not really directed at you, so please don;t feel attacked, I just mean in general, that's the answer.)

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 02:40 PM ----------

Please learn how to write coherently, and not butcher ellipses.

Pleaser learn to add to the thread, and not just flame over your upset over grammar and punctuation...it really does nothing for the thread, the topic, nor yourself. Hell, I don't even know what an ellipses is, but I bet my post was more useful to this thread.
You don't get to look down your nose in superiority when you bring nothing to the table guy.


OT:be the change you wish to see, make a pug group. We did it all the time back ...whenever, it can be done now as well. And oh yes, it will be satisfying in a 'yah we did it, took a while, people had to take 5min breaks and watch vids, and we took 3 extra minutes to discuss fights, but we did manage. It was fun.'
If you are honest with yourselves, what holds you back is your own laziness.

[Osmeric]

why are lfr and flex raid such a big deal .

LFR deflates the myth that the game revolves around hard raiding, or that hard content is popular. This leads to a kind of existential dread in the hardcore mind, that their play style is only tenously viable, and that Blizzard might choose to abandon them.

[Azrile]

Also, who raids 40 hours a week? I play 3 evenings, 3.5 hours/night. We could probably cut an hour each night, down to 2.5, and still do pretty well each tier.

A lot of people exaggerate the time needed to do anything in this game. You can play two nights a week, do normal modes, and be successful with the right leadership. Probably the same amount of time you spend in LFR between 2+ characters.


Guarantee the experience would be 100x as memorable, and more engaging.

I agree with this, but what you are failing to mention is you have to schedule your time, I do not. I do the last 6 bosses of LFR, which takes 2 hours total. I can do 1 hour whenever I want, and another hour whenever I want. The problem with raiding has never been the amount of time you play (heck, some weeks I play 20 hours), but it is the fact that you have to schedule to raid. Yeah, once you get stuff on farm you can get down to 2 nights, but most guilds at the start of a tier require 3 nights, and at least 3 hours. Again though, playing 9 hours a week is nothing for most wow players, but scheduling 3 nights of your real life around a game is the reason most people don´t raid. Getting in ´trouble´ with your guild for being 15 minutes late? or having to leave early?

I absolutely laugh when people say that casuals don´t have the ´talent´ and that is why they don´t raid. But it is also a mistake to assume the reason most people don´t raid is because they don´t play enough hours. My belief is that most players have the ´talent´ to raid successfully... i also think many players play well more than 10 hours a week. But I think where you lose raiders is the the scheduling that it requires. I just will never limit my real life and say ´ok, every tuesday, wednesday and thursday for the next 2 months I will be playing a game from 8-11pm´. It is almost insanity when you think about it

[clevin]

LFR deflates the myth that the game revolves around hard raiding, or that hard content is popular. This leads to a kind of existential dread in the hardcore mind, that their play style is only tenously viable, and that Blizzard might choose to abandon them.

Oh bullshit.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 04:57 PM ----------

I agree with this, but what you are failing to mention is you have to schedule your time, I do not.

Precisely. For people who can schedule time to raid, regular raiding can be done efficiently and you can progress pretty far in 6-12 hours per week. LFR is great for people who either can't do that or simply don't want to.

Personally, I kind of wish Flex had come along before LFR since I think it would have many of the same benefits without the drawbacks. If you couldn't make it one night the raid just scales to accomodate the fact that there's one less person as long as there are 10 people or more.

[Azrile]

Players raiding =/= community.

How many friends have you made in LFR? How many persons have you actually talked to in LFR after your LFR run was completed?
How often do people actually talk to eachother inside LFR? (except for blaming other people for wipes / sucking or asking for vote kicks).

The problem is that everyone is completely anomynous and how you play has no future effects on you, since even if you play bad you complete the task and you will be able to complete it the next, and the next, and the next week while being completely afk. Basically, it encourages 0 player interaction. Fairly obvious this is not healthy for the community.

Or are you seriously saying that the community improved from LFR?

But that argument can go all the way back to LFD. I do not think LFR or LFD helped the community, but I also don´t think it hurt it as much as people think.

Let me show you the difference in ´my´ playing

WOTLK before LFD
7 hours per week spamming /2 for a tank, or staring at my friends list hoping a tank would log in. that is 7 hours sitting in Dalaren doing nothing else
3.5 hours per week running 7 heroic dungeons
0 hour raiding anything

MoP
0 hours per week spamming /2
3.5 hours per week running 7 heroic dungons
2 hours per week doing LFR (6 bosses)

And here is the biggest difference. At the end of the day, the Blizzard devs can count me as a ´raider´.. when they are trying to decide where to devote development time for the next patch. If 25% of your players are ´raiders´.. you can spend a lot more resources on creating raids. Remember, the dev leads who decided to make Naxx 1.0 got bitch-slapped for doing it, and it is the biggest reason Naxx 2.0 happened.. they just cound not justify spending that many resources on something so few players see. Why do you think we are seeing back to back 12 boss raids.. if you are a real raider, you should be thanking LFR. If you want to be the élite´ 1%, then you can expect ToC type raids.

[Noorri]

Oh bullshit.

Powerful arguement there.... :P


Some of the people who raided before LFR simply has a problem with one or more of the following:
1. "having" to do it to get tier bonuses, trinkets etc.
2. that alot more people get to do the raids, aquire powerful rewards and be satisfied with that
3. beeing unable to understand that their choice was either LFR coming into play or that new raids had 3-5 bosses in them because the developers could no longer defend that so much of their time was spent making a game for the 5% (or whatever it was).

LFR was inevitable based on WoWs history, the age of the game and the playerbase. Because of LFR Blizzard figured they would huice up the difficulty of normals to cater to the more hardcore and ended up making a hole that many F&F guilds fell into. So Flex raiding became the solution for a quite clear problem that Blizzard saw in their statistics.

[Azrile]

Oh bullshit.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 04:57 PM ----------



Precisely. For people who can schedule time to raid, regular raiding can be done efficiently and you can progress pretty far in 6-12 hours per week. LFR is great for people who either can't do that or simply don't want to.

Personally, I kind of wish Flex had come along before LFR since I think it would have many of the same benefits without the drawbacks. If you couldn't make it one night the raid just scales to accomodate the fact that there's one less person as long as there are 10 people or more.

I think there is a fundamental difference between Flex and LFR.. and that is social accountability. What many people do not realize is that one of the reasons LFR is so easy is because all mechanisms must be removed that can be used to grief others... basically the tanks are the only individual players who could purposefully wipe a group due to a mechanisms within the fight ( for the most part).

Flex raiding is going to increase individual responsibilities greatly. If you are handpicking your team, then each team member has a vested interest in making the raid succeed. There simply is no reason for anyone to grief and they would be easily dealt with by the rest of the raid members.

I am hopeful that Flex is at least semi-difficult.. If they did what you suggested and replaced LFR with Flex, then Flex would have to be dumbed down also. I am hoping that Flex has all of the mechanisms of normal modes, just with bosses with lower health and lower damage output that scales with the number of players.

For instance

Normal 25M All Mechanisms. Boss with 100% health and damage
Flex w 25M All Mechanisms Boss with 75% health and damage
LFR 25M Missing griefable Mechanisms Boss with 75% health and damage chance for determination buffs after wipes.

[Deja Thoris]

LFR deflates the myth that the game revolves around hard raiding, or that hard content is popular. This leads to a kind of existential dread in the hardcore mind, that their play style is only tenously viable, and that Blizzard might choose to abandon them.

It doesn't revolve around it but its an important showcase for wow since its the "endgame"

I personally don't care for lfr though I run it when it suits my needs. Flex looks cool though. Community and a bit of challenge. Great stuff.

[Deleted]

But that argument can go all the way back to LFD. I do not think LFR or LFD helped the community, but I also don´t think it hurt it as much as people think..

Yes, that argument can go back to LFD aswell. Personally I do not like LFD, but I think LFD had a lower impact than LFR simply because it consumes less time. If a person spends 20 minutes being unsocial or 3 hours, the latter has a bigger impact on the community.

LFD was however the entire reason that cataclysm dungeons did not become the success they had hoped for. Not having LFD would allow blizzard to create more creative dungeons, since apparently blizzard cant create dungeons without everyone clearing them in random groups in 10 minutes, that is considered to be bad design.

I personally would like to see both LFR and LFD go away. I think it would strengthen the community. Given the choice of one, I still think that LFR is the bigger villain. Flex raiding is great however, it is a step in the right direction. Small challenge + community is just what WoW needed.

[Anonymitylol]

Okay, lets have a look at that....My question for you is: What type of player is playing like shit in LFR? My guess....people who are going through for the first time, AND people who are 'too good for LFR' making life suck for others. So noobs, and (ta-da!) hc raiders with a bad tude.
So I guess really, it's the community's to own. (be a part of the solution, stop alt tabbing to facebook and play)
Yes, you CAN cheese it. But if that bothers you, DON'T.
It really is that simple.
No one is making you hit the join queue button.
You CAN make a raid group and do normal. You CAN pug it. OH YES YOU CAN. All it takes, is for you to get off your ass and do it.

Generalize more please.

[wickedbastard]

why are lfr and flex raid such a big deal ..was just on youtube for a few hours looking up new info about soo and boss fights and almost every video i watched was people talking about how lfr was the worst thing ever to come to wow and its just not fair that they can do legendary quest's when they dont even raid normal or how flex raid is just a redo of lfr and blizzard shouldnt be catering to the "casual" players of wow.....i mean if ur raiding 10 and 25 man why do you care that the little guy who cant get a raid grp or has no time to be a raider can complete a legendary quest itl take him 4x longer then you to get whatever done or how blizzard is giving people epics well dam i bet you wouldnt complain if that was you trying to gear up and flex raid they might have said "friends and family" but what all i hear is comming from people is family. Its for both and casuals and people who cant get any further on bosses does nothing but help people in fact ...maybe its just that 1% of hardcore raiders that feel like if they dont put in 40 + hours a week into a "game!!!!!" that they shouldnt gear gear and rewards not like your competing for worlds first with some guy in full lfr gear lol ...................whats the big deal with it

my eyes aaahhh they bleedd aahh need interpunction

[Deleted]

we cant wait for Flex in our guild.
Last friday for alt run signed 17 people, so many couldnt go (we don't pug). Flex being easier then normal is also a plus, not every alt is well geared or not every player play on alt with same skill as on main.

[Deleted]

you shouldnt be able to get a legendary by afk'ing a few weeks. Which Lfr allows you to ^^ .

1) Just because it's possible doesn't mean everyone does it. I for one, do not, and enjoy playing my part within the raid.
2) There is a thing called the Vote Kick system. It's a shame that nobody ever uses it, or is so bloody slow when it comes to kicking players.

[Deleted]

As other pointed out, LFR completely removes responsibility towards others (social and in terms of playing). That's why 90% of LFR chat is just flames and insults, and why most of the players in LFR do not try to play good: Because there are no repercussions.
Note that this trend has already started when paid character transfers were introduces. While I do say it is a good tool, it destroyed the responsibility towards others. Before that, if you always acted like a jerk, you had a bad reputation on your server and most guilds wouldn't invite you. Leveling another character and especially equipping it on another server wasn't as easy as today. But, afterwards, you just could change server and act like a jerk again.

But flex raids are a different story. I very much like the idea, it has many possibilities to be used:
- For the more hardcore raiders: Twink-raids, achievement runs, ...
- For the average person: Just raid with some friends in an easier than normal mode.

Nevertheless, I like both additions to the game. But they're just not for everyone, so there will always be people complaining because they think what they like gets the short end of the stick (which is, to a certain extent, also true).

[Deleted]

I met a high % of my friends in TBC while making groups for 5man and joining PuG for raids, You pretty much knew everyone on your server, you saw people with gear and wanted to be like them and put in the effort to be like them.

In Wrath I again met a high % of friends in random 5mans while it was boring looking for a tank or healer it did make you talk to people more, you know who to trust and who not to group with.

During the end of Wrath when 5man was pretty random you didnt know people but queues were fast, tanks learnt the ability to be ass-hats because they knew everyone needed them >>> less reason to get to know people in your group.

During Cata, pretty much the same, queue for random get some randoms do your run and go, they are not on your server so you cant add them so why get to know them. >> Dont want to give your real name to some stranger dont add to real ID

MoP LFR get rewards of raid level without putting in the effort of raiding. You can auto attack the boss and still get loot.
While a raider has to do all the work to get their orange. Someone who put in 2-3 hour a week on LFR will have the same reward at the end of expan as someone who raided 2-7+ days a week.

While I have no issue with LFR as it is a easy way to gear my alts when I want to play LoL but if you are a tank in LFR you pretty much have to carry your raid while most others "CAN" just afk and get a free ride.

[Checksmix]

LFR doesn't make people learn their class. This game is a group game and it requires you to do nothing to get a group but afk for a que to pop. The best way to do an encoutner in LFR is to stand in everything, ignore every mechanic except the FEW that acutally can hurt or kill you (death beam on Durumu is the first one i can think of). It's no work for rewards. That's just not what a game should be. You should have to put in SOME effort to get any rewards.

Flex raiding is actually DECENT. It makes you at least put some effort into getting a group, and MAYBE requres you to do mechanics. People that don't put in the effort shouldn't get rewards. Yes i am aware there needs to be things for casuals to do. They should get rewarded for it. Raid mounts that you can get from Flex raiding or LFR means it is worth nothing which saddens me. Over all i am in favor of flex raiding, but with it they need to removed LFR.

[Hotsforyou]

Those people that play like shit aren't raiding normals, have no desire to raid normals and don't have the talent to do so. You're in heroic progression. You shouldn't be in LFR. If you choose to use it then let the people it's designed for have their fun.

A heroic raider going into LFR is like Pele going to an amateur/rural soccer match and scoring 23 goals. While doing so he mocks and ridicules the individual players for their lack of talent.

I am in heroic progression and i have to do LFR every week at a chance for the tank trinkets which have STILL NOT DROPPED after months in tot. even with coin rolls i still have not seen a tank trinket drop in Throne. They do not exist me thinks.