LFR: 80% waiting, 20% playing

[roahn the warlock]

Automated system that does everything for you and you need to complain?

If it bothers you so much, how about you start using one of the many other options like using OpenRaid, OQueue or form your own raids. Oh wait, you would have to put effort in

But since you ask if Blizzard will ever "fix" this...how would they go about it to please? Put 24 perfectly functioning bots at your side for your insta queue / insta clear / no wipe comfort zone?

I issue you a challenge, start a level one, no friends, no help, no gold. and get into a raiding guild without ever going into LFR. I wanna see if you can do it.

[Puri]

From my experience I'd say that somewhere between 5.2 and now they deliberately or accidently removed the preferred queuing for groups that are already in progress. In DS there was a hotfix that groups that are already in the dungeon would always get preferred for filling up their free spots.

Right now when a tank or healer - depending on time and server the role that is in most demand - leaves, you will wait pretty much just as long or even longer as if you would leave and requeue. But this is not because nobody would fill this spots - last week our tank left lfr before Thok, and after 25 minutes in the queue I asked a friend to queue as tank for that lfr part. He had five minutes waiting time, and then got into a completely fresh run although we still were waiting for over 30 minutes.
Ten minutes later another one from my guild got invite for that lfr part, and he also started a fresh run although he was less than 25 minutes in the queue.

We waited another five minutes, and when we asked the new tank how long he had been in the queue he said almost 10 minutes.

One possibility I could imagine is that the "preferred" timer gets reset everytime a DPS gets replaced, and this happens pretty much every minute.

[Galbrei]

20%? You're being generous. Even once inside it's just a slow wait for the boss to die, it's not like you're actually fighting it, strategizing around or being awake at all anyway.

Luckly LFR is no longer necessary for anyone. With some Timeless gear you can jump straight into Flex and leave LFR for the too anti-social to attempt any form of raiding that involves communicating with other people.

[roahn the warlock]

20%? You're being generous. Even once inside it's just a slow wait for the boss to die, it's not like you're actually fighting it, strategizing around or being awake at all anyway.

Luckly LFR is no longer necessary for anyone. With some Timeless gear you can jump straight into Flex and leave LFR for the too anti-social to attempt any form of raiding that involves communicating with other people.

Try to get into flex with an ilvl below 535, Try it.

That means a shit ton of burdens. And many people are not that lucky, I spend three days there farming 100k coins for the stupid mount and didn't loot one burden

- - - Updated - - -

I just really dislike the whole idea of LFR, easy raiding...

I'm hoping to get back into WoD raiding without needing LFR first.

If they don't scale heroics up in 6.1 or 2, I'm quitting the game, I refuse to ever do LF retards again, it is worse than any grind in Vanilla WoW

[roahn the warlock]

Sounds pretty harsh to que LFR on a english or american realm (or is it just me?). I never run into so many problems in LFR on european realms. The worst case I had was LFR4, infront of garrosh, nobody wanted to take responsibility for the ingi. Then the raidlead just decided to chose someone, a hunter. That hunter instantly left the raid. The same happened to the next chosen person...kinda sad.

Lol, that's kind of funny, hunters also get all upset when you make them do belt.

[Lukazor]

20%? You're being generous. Even once inside it's just a slow wait for the boss to die, it's not like you're actually fighting it, strategizing around or being awake at all anyway.

Luckly LFR is no longer necessary for anyone. With some Timeless gear you can jump straight into Flex and leave LFR for the too anti-social to attempt any form of raiding that involves communicating with other people.

This is obviously just rubbish, I've been playing my boosted horde DK 90 for 2 weeks and have an ilvl of 525 and that's with running LFR, using a Garrosh heirloom, getting a warforged chest from Ordos and getting lucky with 3 burdens plus buying some 522 bits. Even with heroic SoO boss achivs people will NOT take me into Flex groups on my realm because my ilvl 'is too low'.

So I'd love to know how you jumped straight into Flex with just timeless gear.

[roahn the warlock]

This is obviously just rubbish, I've been playing my boosted horde DK 90 for 2 weeks and have an ilvl of 525 and that's with running LFR, using a Garrosh heirloom, getting a warforged chest from Ordos and getting lucky with 3 burdens plus buying some 522 bits. Even with heroic SoO boss achivs people will NOT take me into Flex groups on my realm because my ilvl 'is too low'.

So I'd love to know how you jumped straight into Flex with just timeless gear.

Hehe, you said rubbish.

Anyway, try tanking, they will take you if you tank, as a dk just reforge everything to mastery and you're golden

[Deleted]

This is obviously just rubbish, I've been playing my boosted horde DK 90 for 2 weeks and have an ilvl of 525 and that's with running LFR, using a Garrosh heirloom, getting a warforged chest from Ordos and getting lucky with 3 burdens plus buying some 522 bits. Even with heroic SoO boss achivs people will NOT take me into Flex groups on my realm because my ilvl 'is too low'.

So I'd love to know how you jumped straight into Flex with just timeless gear.

Weird because I just link my heroic garrosh achievement and I can get into any flex group without even stating my item level. I guess this really only works if you roll a healer.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Bots that replace players if they leave, TBH, something that Garrisons could lead up to.

If blizzard has to result to adding bots to compensate for terrible players then they've basically failed their job, give people a reason to put in some fucking effort and they will. If they don't then they simply won't get rewarded, Diablo 3 (despite it's flaws) has a great system of loot. It's all random but the more you play (and at a higher difficulty) the more you get rewarded. Do you see that in LFR? Fuck no, you hit a button -> accept queue pop -> press 1-3 buttons (most dpsers do that blindly it seems...) -> get reward. Where's the involvement? How come the person that watches TV on the side or any other activity (desktop/afk even) gets the same reward as the player that tries to improve himself/herself by doing his best? I seriously HATE LFR in it's current form, there's been youtube video series of actual dedicated gamers boosting a lvl 90 (as an experiment) then queuing for dungeons until LFR ilvl and then they complete SoO LFR within a month. The fun thing about that experiment is that the player (rogue) NEVER actually did anything, in 5mans he'd just follow group and not dps. Same in LFR, he wouldn't even be kicked very often. How LOW has the game (and community) gone that you can basically finish the game (lowest difficulty mind you) without actually doing anything? This to me as a competitive gamer is worrying, I think it's this bad spiral that in the end is going to kill wow.
Get some sort of system in LFR (all raids that automatically delivers loot) that rewards people who try and punish those who don't, being new to the game (or class) is perfectly fine. Not wanting or not having any reason to improve your effectiveness is TERRIBLE for the game, it really is.

[Littlepinch]

That's kind of how I felt. After gearing my various chars in LFR and with VP gear, I reached a plateau where it just felt like a terrible chore to sit in a raid queue for an hour to maybe get some slightly better gear. By the time the last one came out I just couldn't stand it anymore. Knowing that was the end and at the next xpac launch it would all be made worthless anyway, I had to quit. GW 2 is a far superior game IMO, I actually feel like I can accomplish something there that will endure, not just let me walk up another flight of stairs to the party on the next floor that soon moves up another floor so I have to climb up again and again and again and...

I refuse to pay a sub to sit and wait to play a video game. They make some changes to get rid of the interminable queue times or get rid of the sub fee, I might come back. Otherwise, so long WoW. I'll get the story for free off WoWpedia and YouTube.

Lol GW2 is even worse then wow - All there is to do is grind the same dun's over and over to get a set of gear that looks different, doesn't even make you more powerful aka waste of my time. Only good thing in GW2 was the dodge mechanic.

[Raelbo]

They need to remove determination and nerf the fights to the ground tbh. By adding determination they are admitting the fight is overtuned and that wipes will happen, so why not just save us the hassle and make the fights lolmode.

Determination is a good way of dealing with a spectrum of player skill levels. It's also a good way of encouraging players to improve without destroying them in the process.

Stronger groups will 1 shot most bosses. Nerfing LFR will make it less fun for them.
Weaker groups will take 3-4 attempts at some bosses, but they'll stay. So they'll get more practice. This cannot help but yield some improvement in skill.

I don't see any real benefit of nerfing LFR simply so that a mass of people can clear it in record time. Where's the fun in that?

Inb4 "lol m8 y dont they just mail u epixxxxx". The reality is this - the good players are no longer queueing for LFR because of this very problem, and it's only going to worse. It was good players, like myself, that were actually getting these bosses down. Without us LFR is royally screwed.

I think you give yourself too much credit. Have you ever considered the possibility that some of those players you allegedly carried actually improved, both in ability and in gear? Just because there are some useless fools participating in LFR does not mean all are completely hopeless. I think you'd be stunned to find out just how many decent players other than you are keeping it going and that in the absence of some "hero" coming to save them from LFR bosses, most will actually rise to the challenge...eventually.

[Lukazor]

Hehe, you said rubbish.

Anyway, try tanking, they will take you if you tank, as a dk just reforge everything to mastery and you're golden

What's wrong with saying rubbish :O

Yeah it's a tank but so far been unsuccessful in getting into any groups... It's like I've cleared the place, done half of it on heroic, I know how to play but to some people that just doesn't seem to matter it's all about ilvl.

Ah well I'll just keep trying I guess.

[roahn the warlock]

What's wrong with saying rubbish :O

Yeah it's a tank but so far been unsuccessful in getting into any groups... It's like I've cleared the place, done half of it on heroic, I know how to play but to some people that just doesn't seem to matter it's all about ilvl.

Ah well I'll just keep trying I guess.

Maybe it's just the EU servers. On the US I jumped into Flex on a tank in 533 and get in most groups easy. since at any time, there's only like 2 tanks LFG anyway. So you take what you can get.


that being said, my warlock can't get into a group with an ilvl of 545 because the warlock with 561 looks so much more shiney

[Raelbo]

Diablo 3 (despite it's flaws) has a great system of loot. It's all random but the more you play (and at a higher difficulty) the more you get rewarded. Do you see that in LFR? Fuck no,

LFR players who put in no effort land up with a bunch of 528 gear and insufficient skill to do anything with it. People who put in the effort to do Flex land up with 548 gear (people who put in effort also get enough VP to do upgrades). People who put in even more effort get 561 -567 gear and the people putting in the most effort get 574-580 gear.

Your assertion makes no sense.

you hit a button -> accept queue pop -> press 1-3 buttons (most dpsers do that blindly it seems...) -> get reward. Where's the involvement? How come the person that watches TV on the side or any other activity (desktop/afk even) gets the same reward as the player that tries to improve himself/herself by doing his best?

For me the biggest reward isn't the loot. Sure, loot is a reward, but it is hardly the be-all and end-all of what I get out of the game. For me, and I hope the vast majority of raiders out there, the real reward is the experience - downing the bosses, pushing yourself, feeling you actually did something.

If someone chooses to be a leach in LFR, it is ultimately them who are losing the most.

there's been youtube video series of actual dedicated gamers boosting a lvl 90 (as an experiment) then queuing for dungeons until LFR ilvl and then they complete SoO LFR within a month. The fun thing about that experiment is that the player (rogue) NEVER actually did anything, in 5mans he'd just follow group and not dps. Same in LFR, he wouldn't even be kicked very often. How LOW has the game (and community) gone that you can basically finish the game (lowest difficulty mind you) without actually doing anything? This to me as a competitive gamer is worrying, I think it's this bad spiral that in the end is going to kill wow.

Just because a handful of players do this, out of what, 3-4 odd million LFR participants, doesn't mean jack shit.

Get some sort of system in LFR (all raids that automatically delivers loot) that rewards people who try and punish those who don't,

I am going to be blunt. This is a problem with you, not the community. There is absolutely no need to advocate punishing a bunch of people who aren't conforming to your idea of having fun when they are playing a game whose primary intention is to have fun.

Not wanting or not having any reason to improve your effectiveness is TERRIBLE for the game, it really is.

I fail to see any argument here proving that (most) people don't want to improve their effectiveness. So you can't use it as a given fact. And therein lies a big problem with your entire line of reasoning.

[Deleted]

Solution is don't do lfr. Sounds trite but I'm serious.

Why put up with a system that makes you join up with 24 other people who are likely bad and leave so quickly. It makes no sense.

I agree. Especially with the expansion being so far away you do not need to hurry to get gear at all. Don't burn out because of LFR.

[lunchbox2042]

Raiding has always required organization to get started. You're already taking a shortcut to the organization by hitting a button and queuing for a raid so I wouldn't really complain about queue times.

[darxide]

Any solution planned for this?

Yes. Join a guild.

[RickJamesLich]

OP, just skip LFR, it's had this problem since it's creation and it's likely not ever going to go away. Your best bet is to farm timeless isle for 535 gear and go straight into Flex raids, and if you have trouble finding them, then lead one on your own or make friends with someone that runs them. This solution will be WAY more fun and will save you a lot of aggravation in the logn run.

[Alvito]

Flex LFR should alleviate this to some extent.

The need for a certain amount of tanks/healers are almost always the issue flex wont do anything about the tanks and very little about healing.

[Celista]

Will Blizzard to anything to adress this? Everytime I do LFR the group wipes on a boss, everyone leaves (because they for some mysterious reason expected to one shot everything) and you are back in queue for 30 minutes again. Rince and repeat.

Any solution planned for this?

Organize premade LFRs with a guild, group of people on your server, OpenRaid, oQueue, etc. It will help foster a sense of community if you play with people from your own guild/server and the LFR queue system will fill the empty slot with pugs if you don't quite fill up or if someone has to leave. There are a lot of people looking for higher quality LFR experiences and I'm sure some people would also love to avoid the 1-hr long queue times Also people tend to try harder when they are not in an anonymous group, and the tanks and healers get less harassment from premade groups.

Something to consider anyways. Our guild used to do premade LFRs during T14 but now we pretty much stick to flex/normal + hm runs for alt runs.

Good luck