4 raiding difficulties

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Isnt that a little bit too much?

[McNeil]

Never been a fan of having so many different difficulties, I like the idea of just having one difficult raid setting and explore the raid slowly. Had a blast doing that in Karazhan, and I've never had that feeling again. Maybe in Ulduar though.

[WanderingBreezes]

As you may have noticed since, this topic is brought up all the time since 5.4 was detailed out prior to its release and is an ongoing topic of conversation. What you can expect is "Yes, there should be normal and brutal rabble rabble" and "why should I pay subscription money for you to raid and me to not get to see it?" And that's about all you need to know.

[Arbs]

Actually their is technically only 3 Difficulties. They aren't counting LFR as a Raid difficulty.

[Darsithis]

I think it's a good idea. It gives nearly everyone some way to progress at end-game.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

I think it's a good idea. It gives nearly everyone some way to progress at end-game.

Agreed but four just seems too much, i prefer three since lfr-normal-heroic=faceroll-normal-hard

[TaxmanCDN]

They spend allot of time developing raid content, and want as many people to see it as possible. Very few players can raid at a Mythic level of difficulty, and if you make it easy then allot of raiders will have nothing to do. Multiple difficulties serve the player base better.

And as said above, LFR is not a raid difficulty.

[Lora]

Actually their is technically only 3 Difficulties. They aren't counting LFR as a Raid difficulty.

so the raid part in looking for raid is to just be ignored? there are 4 difficulties. lfr, normal, heroic, and mythic.

[Tehterokkar]

There are 3 Raiding difficulties; Normal, Heroic and Mythic. First two are Pug difficulties and friendlier to raid compositions, Mythic is fixed 20m "hardcore" difficulty.

LFR isn't raiding, it's sightseeing.

[Florena]

I think it's fine.

You get lfr as Tourist Mode for people who don't have the time or interest to raid properly. They don't get the good rewards, but they see the content and can do it whenever.

You have Normal for pugs and casual, social groups.

You have Heroic for those that want a bit more of a challenge, but aren't/don't want to be hardcore raiders.

And finally Mythic for the hardcore crowd.

Everyone gets a raiding difficulty they can fit into. The only problem I see is if they screw up the itemization and make it so you still feel 'forced' to do lower difficulties to progress in a higher difficulty.

[Echocho]

4 difficulties is fine. It's utter bullshit that you have to do the instance first on normal and then again on heroic though. Progressing through the same tier twice shouldn't be required.

[Sinndra]

Agreed but four just seems too much, i prefer three since lfr-normal-heroic=faceroll-normal-hard

quit thinking about "you". and realize their are others who dont share your opinion about the difficulties. there are 4 because there are 4 levels of players. yes there are actually players that feel LFR is not "faceroll". they might not say it is hard.. but they dont think its faceroll either. regardless of what you think about that difficulty. if you dont like it, or feel its to easy, or beneath you, then look at the other difficulties as your starting point and go from there.

just another masked "i hate LFR so remove it" thread.

[Leih]

I do think 3 difficulties would be enough. That being "Flex", Normal and Heroic. Or to use the new names, Normal, Heroic and Mythic. I actually think the "Flex" level of difficulty is a really really good addition. It allows a difficulty that is for organised groups and PuGs, which can be tuned nice and easy to get people started on real raiding. It's what they should have added years ago instead of LFR.

So while I think 3 difficulties might have been better than 4, adding Flex was a good move. The difficulty that I think we could do without is LFR.

However, now that it's been introduced it would hurt more than it would help to remove it. Blizzard know that too. It has its niche, and removing it completely would piss off a lot of people who never go beyond LFR and are actually quite happy with jumping in for random pugs once a week. Those people, contrary to popular belief, would probably not suddenly decide to find a raid guild if LFR was removed, they'd most likely just unsub.

The best solution for everyone would be to tone down LFR rewards to make sure that nobody who does organised raiding would ever ever need to do it if they don't want to, so that for those of us who raid in an organised group, we have 3 difficulties (normal/heroic/mythic) and for those folks who don't give a shit about traditional raiding, they have LFR for something to do. This seems to be the way Blizzard are slowly going, with talk of different trinkets and no proper tier loot in LFRs. Hopefully they will stick to their guns on that.

[Pann]

You get lfr as Tourist Mode for people who don't have the time or interest to raid properly. They don't get the good rewards, but they see the content and can do it whenever.

This won't last, when Blizzard find out they are not getting the good rewards in the form of the majority's sub fees they'll add good rewards to LFR quicker than you can say "we have no other ideas.".

[Denkou]

I think 4 is too much in terms of ilvl inflation.

[nekobaka]

This won't last, when Blizzard find out they are not getting the good rewards in the form of the majority's sub fees they'll add good rewards to LFR quicker than you can say "we have no other ideas.".

Why does LFR has to get showered with rewards while alternatives get to sit in shadows for more effort? If LFRs only way of survival is skewing the effort to reward structure and dwarf alternative forms of content in order to keep LFR alive then obviously not that many enjoy it. Further pandering to LFR only serves to further prop up raid content focus.

- - - Updated - - -

I think it's a good idea. It gives nearly everyone some way to progress at end-game.

While further separating the population. With solo and smaller group based content this isnt so much an issue, but with larger groups causes issues.

[Axelond]

1 for anyone
1 for the people who want to spend minimal effort
1 for the people who want to take raiding seriously but don't have the skill or experience required
1 for end game and people who want to min max everything

Makes sense although if anything is going away I can see lfr being removed. Blizzard is pushing flex harder with their own group finder and the lfr gear can be replaced by hc dungeon loot. All the trubble with afking and just clueless people in lfr is a problem that will never go away. You feel powerless in lfr and that the game is really killing the boss for you. Everyone should be able to do flex so imo LFR has really no place in WoD.

[Pann]

Why does LFR has to get showered with rewards while alternatives get to sit in shadows for more effort? If LFRs only way of survival is skewing the effort to reward structure and dwarf alternative forms of content in order to keep LFR alive then obviously not that many enjoy it. Further pandering to LFR only serves to further prop up raid content focus.

The alternatives only exist because the majority have LFR forced upon them. LFR survival is not an issue the simple fact is that not enough players run raids to justify the survival of raiding in its current or proposed forms without the money from the LFR crowd.

[HeedmySpeed]

Three was too much, four was overkill.
I liked the vanilla model of one raid, but then again I'm one of those fools who enjoys RPG elements.

I felt like two modes was really enough to allow new players to engage in the content and have the instance exist as it's true self.

Having such an easy way to see the content in LFR still gives me zero inclination to start raiding again. I'm the glad the gear difference is more than just iLvl and a recolor, though. But it still isn't enough to put in the time for harder modes.

[RoKPaNda]

Four is fine.

*snicker* I see the "LFR isn't raiding." thing is still a thing sadly. Sorry bros, LFR *IS* raiding. It might be beneath you, but it's still raiding and once they realize that they're getting short changed this expansion they'll get all the same stuff that you do again, just lower ilevel and not the same cosmetic goodies. There are a lot more of them and they can scream and cry and pitch a fit a whole lot louder than you.

The alternatives only exist because of the majority that have LFR forced upon them. LFR survival is not an issue the simple fact is that not enough players run raids to justify the survival of raiding in its current or proposed forms without the money from the LFR crowd.

Pretty much. Organized raiding is very flawed, it's designed poorly, and you can see this quite easily in-game. The difference between LFR and normal raiding in terms of gear level is HUGE, and LFR participation just completely dwarfs normal+ participation. Turning normal into Flex and thus making it more on demand rather than scheduled will help with that somewhat. They added cosmetic rewards on top of the huge ilevel gap and still proper raiding is a teeny tiny minority. Now they're to the point of taking things away from LFR to make normal raiding seem more appealing. It's pretty bad design.