Why should raiding be exclusive?

[Snorkles]

I think it's really only the trinkets and maybe Tier set bonuses that do create incentive in the beginning of the Tier.
I think it is not unreasonable to request that LFR trinkets are not more powerful that last Tiers HEROIC trinkets that were acquired with A LOT of teamwork.

I honestly don't understand - people don't want to hold their guilds back because they're missing tier bonuses right? So remove an additional source of said tier bonuses? As it stands now, you can run LFR to potentially get a tier bonus, up your DPS/HPS/Mitigation to help your guild. What you want is for that option to be removed? Therefore holding your build back when you get an unlucky Tier token streak?

Makes no sense to me.

[Daffan]

Dont like LFR because it is crap content for casual players

lets blizzard make 0 content outside of raids for a casual player

other than LFR what can a casual do? for PVE.

etc etc, and im NOT a casual and saying this. The rest of the game is too easy/baby cause of LFR

[Strafir]

You don't read past the first few words do you? My typo's aren't that bad.

bro you're wearing a strength gem on your druid.

[Deleted]

I honestly don't understand - people don't want to hold their guilds back because they're missing tier bonuses right? So remove an additional source of said tier bonuses? As it stands now, you can run LFR to potentially get a tier bonus, up your DPS/HPS/Mitigation to help your guild. What you want is for that option to be removed? Therefore holding your build back when you get an unlucky Tier token streak?

Makes no sense to me.

It makes a lot of sense. Because lfr is no fun and feeling forced to do it, just not to hold back the guild, is a bad thing. It just makes you look less committed than your guild mates if you are the only one not going lfr to get a set bonus/trinket because some people in a forum tell you it's optional.

[anaxie]

I honestly don't understand - people don't want to hold their guilds back because they're missing tier bonuses right? So remove an additional source of said tier bonuses? As it stands now, you can run LFR to potentially get a tier bonus, up your DPS/HPS/Mitigation to help your guild. What you want is for that option to be removed? Therefore holding your build back when you get an unlucky Tier token streak?

Makes no sense to me.

The problem is inferior alternatives of play shouldn't even remotely be tempting for those who it is not designed for. Which is an entire lie, It is designed with a partial group of unintended audience in mid or else you get 3 hour wipefests while having "fun"

[gamingmuscle]

bro you're wearing a strength gem on your druid.

DAMNIT I noticed that last night and forgot. Thanks for reminding me. Obviously it was a mis-gem. I am a JC'er I do have bags of gems on me =P

[Granyala]

I honestly don't understand - people don't want to hold their guilds back because they're missing tier bonuses right? So remove an additional source of said tier bonuses? As it stands now, you can run LFR to potentially get a tier bonus, up your DPS/HPS/Mitigation to help your guild. What you want is for that option to be removed? Therefore holding your build back when you get an unlucky Tier token streak?

Makes no sense to me.

It makes perfect sense.
Since the content isn't balanced around farming the crap out of LFR, farming that Tier isn't needed in order to progress.

It's just an unspoken rule to do anything you can do to get maximum possible player power.
The real reason why players follow that rule, is because of competition, since you don't want the other guy to overtake you because you were "lazy".

If you remove the avenue for all participants, by removing Tier set bonuses from LFR, the playing field stays level.
The content may or may not live an ID longer, but the people can play what they LIKE and not do something they hate because peer pressure makes it mandatory.

It's a win/win scenario for Blizzard (longer content lifetime) and Raiders (less burnout/frustration), except for the poor lads in LFR that don't get carried by annoyed raiders anymore.

[SpacedOut]

Why do people feel raid content should be exclusive only to "good" players?

Why is it that if you want to go into an instance, fight a big boss that has mechanics, and want to work together with a larger group of people, you HAVE to put in 15 hours a week and be good at the game?

Why should the new boss models, the new instance architecture, the new art, all be exclusive to people that can put in X amount of time and put out X amount of DPS?

I don't really get why raiding, as an activity, needs to be exclusive. I mean, do we require everyone to be 100% physically fit to play any sort of football? We don't, so why should there be prerequisites for engaging in raiding as an activity? I don't see why Normals/Heroics should be the only difficulties of raiding.

I'm not saying that there should be un-exclusive modes of raiding (I know LFR and Flex exist), I'm asking why people think LFR and Flex should be removed, and that raiding should only be exclusive to "good" players

I don't feel that raiding should be exclusive to good players, in fact I don't think that any body is so bad at the game that with a little patience they couldn't clear normal mode raids, which is why normal mode is a good difficulty. What I disagree with is raiding being made effortless in LFR and that being held up as a pinnacle of accessibility. Raiding shouldn't be effortless, it should require you to try in order to be rewarded. 'Bad' players can still put in effort and clear fights on normal difficulty, nobody is so bad they can't do that.

You break raiding up into several defining pieces:

1. Going into an instance
2. Fighting a big boss that has mechanics
3. Work together with a large group of people

You then claim that restricting these features to normal mode would require that you a) invest 15 hours a week and b) be good. I've already addressed the being good bit, so let's talk about whether or not you actually get these from LFR, and the time investment required for normal mode.

Firstly, anybody can go into an instance, you don't have to be a genius to manage that. Secondly, LFR hardly qualifies as fighting a big boss with mechanics. If LFR bosses had real mechanics, then having 2/3 of the raid just training on one target with no real idea what's going on wouldn't be an effective strategy, which it is. Some LFR bosses, the better ones (by better I mean not absolutely terrible), have mechanics that need at least half the raid or so to understand them, and you might even wipe a couple of times until someone explains to people what they should be doing.

Of course by this point about half the people putting in no effort will have left to complain that LFR is too hard on the forums, and half the attentive players will have left out of impatience, so you have 13 spots to fill, but at least the bosses require some co-ordination.

As for working together in a large group, LFR doesn't require this beyond the most basic recognition of roles as tanks, healers, and dps. It really doesn't require any more co-ordination than a 5 man. The only difference is that there's more people, so hey if it's really the number of people that's most attractive about a raid then cool, people can stare at their unit frames and drool.

The time investment has always seemed like a weird complaint to me, it's one of the most rewarding parts of raiding. You put in time and effort, and you get out progression. With LFR you put in little time and almost no effort, and you get out no progression beyond killing the final boss of an expansion on a difficulty that every other level 90 in existence has too. Oh, and you get gear in the form of some fairly substandard epics, but gear as the end motivation for your raiding is one of the least healthy mindsets you can have in the game, and the reason for 99% of guild drama. Still, I suppose if there's nothing else you can get out of raiding you have to take gear as a sign that it was all worthwhile.

The time investment for normal mode isn't even close to what you seem to be implying either, you can easily raid on 6 hours of free time a week, a couple of 3 hour evening slots is sufficient, especially since Blizzard introduced raid lock extension what feels like eons ago so that people could progress on less of a time investment. 15 Hours isn't a requirement, not even close, and I think 6 hours seems perfectly reasonable.

I guess we're going to need a simile here. I've always looked at this debate as a kind of Mount Everest climb. Climbing Mount Everest is probably one of the most time intensive and rewarding things you could ever do. Now imagine that a group of people complained that only people with the time to spare and the physical fitness required could climb the mountain, and said that this was in some way unjust. So they build a cable car to the top, so they can experience the 'reward' that previously only obsessive mountain climbers could ever experience. What they don't realise is that they're not experiencing what the mountain climber experienced, not even close to it, by taking a cable car to the top.

Raiding is the same, there's an experience there that you'll never know you were missing if you only ever did LFR. Sure you might feel justified that the game is now in some way more 'fair', but at the end of the day you never experienced the best things about raiding.

You never experienced the careful calibration of a strategy over dozens of attempts, until everything finally clicks and you bring the boss down. You never experienced that awesome feeling when the boss drops on what you had officially agreed would be your last attempt of the night. You never experienced the feeling of bonding with your team-mates over months of invested time together, or sitting up WAY later than you should into the night discussing mechanics with your class-mates on Ventrillo. In short, you never experienced all the awesome things that make raiding so great, because you never know about them until you try.

Normal mode raiding is not exclusive, you don't need to be 100% perfect at the game any more than you need to be 100% physically fit to play football, but in the same way that football at least requires you to get off your arse to kick the ball around, so should raiding require you to at least invest a small amount of time and effort, before we end up with entire generations of players who metaphorically play Fifa in their spare time and think they've experienced everything that Lionel Messi has.

[gamingmuscle]

It makes perfect sense.
Since the content isn't balanced around farming the crap out of LFR, farming that Tier isn't needed in order to progress.

It's just an unspoken rule to do anything you can do to get maximum possible player power.
The real reason why players follow that rule, is because of competition, since you don't want the other guy to overtake you because you were "lazy".

If you remove the avenue for all participants, by removing Tier set bonuses from LFR, the playing field stays level.
The content may or may not live an ID longer, but the people can play what they LIKE and not do something they hate because peer pressure makes it mandatory.

It's a win/win scenario for Blizzard (longer content lifetime) and Raiders (less burnout/frustration), except for the poor lads in LFR that don't get carried by annoyed raiders anymore.

Or just make LFR/Flex/Normal/Heroic share the same lockout.

[Rexxr]

Some people may think so, but as a matter of fact, it is not exclusive anymore.

Whether that I good or bad I will not judge. Hell..I am fine with people calling it anything but raiding. A quick wing here and there suits me better these days than in fact spending 3 hrs a night on 3-4 days and I can live with it if these raids (in LFR) don't give pets, mounts, achieves and whatnot.

If it shuts the haters up, I could even live with it droping the same gear as it does now, but with blue text ^^

Why does the color of text bother you? It is a raid!

[Deleted]

Or just make LFR/Flex/Normal/Heroic share the same lockout.

Perfect solution in my opinion.

[Granyala]

Or just make LFR/Flex/Normal/Heroic share the same lockout.

That would suck. What if you want to accompany your friend outside of the raid schedule?
Being forced to roll an alt for that?

Come on.

Proper Item balancing IS the obvious solution, Blizzard knows that.
It's not that they are incapable of making LFR uninteresting to the raiders, they are UNWILLING to do it, in order to keep things going in there.

[gamingmuscle]

Perfect solution in my opinion.

Perfect for some. It will solve some problems and create others. Probably have a similar if not same reaction as when 10/25 became one lockout.

[Nillo]

Man you are certainly great at ignoring context to insert your own meaning into things.

And so are you o0...

[gamingmuscle]

That would suck. What if you want to accompany your friend outside of the raid schedule?
Being forced to roll an alt for that?

Come on.

Proper Item balancing IS the obvious solution, Blizzard knows that.
It's not that they are incapable of making LFR uninteresting to the raiders, they are UNWILLING to do it, in order to keep things going in there.

While you can nerf the gear into the ground you are punishing the majority of the contents audience to deter the minority.

Neither option is good. Personally I'd prefer they did neither =P

- - - Updated - - -

And so are you o0...

I did? Where? How? I apologize if I really did.

[Granyala]

While you can nerf the gear into the ground you are punishing the majority of the contents audience to deter the minority.

No matter what you do to de-incentivize LFR for raiders, you will be "punishing the majority".

[Deleted]

Because it's a game. It needs to be able to offer you fun without it feeling like a chore.

.

Its an MMO-game, do you think as many would play if you got handed everything instantly without effort?

[Katchii]

I don't think raiding should be exclusive. But I will say, raiding in TBC felt 100x more awe inspiring and badass than now because you knew you were part of a pretty small group of players rather than just another 1 in the millions that do it every day.

[Synstir]

Well let's say they'd make an event at the kindergarten where they hide a valuable diamond in the sandbox once every week.
Adults would still feel stupid to dig among the kids but that diamond....

But then dig and don't call the the thing childish as it si supposed to be childish, right?
LFR is not aimed at hc raider so it is quite logical that if they enter they would be like: omg, this is face roll or, omg, no need for any skills... as the target group for lfr is not having the same skills. If you decide to go for the diamond, then go for the diamond, nobody is stopping you; in fact you are welcome to.

[Redpanda]

with how blizzard wants everyone to see content. im fine with that. lfr for people that cant dedicate time. flex for people moving up. and normal/heroic raiders are what they are. do what you feel you want to participate in BUT if you do set realistic expectations. if i where to que up for lfr im expecting a few wipes, im expecting it to be messing im expecting it to be a shit show. flex groups have always been more chill aswell as reg/heroic raids.