The hate on LFR

[Tekkommo]

If vannila was alredy casual than there was no reason to make wow even more casual.

The hardcore content is still there for people that want it.

[Deleted]

Could anyone explain to me all the hate on LFR? It's supposedly one of the worst things that happened to the game ever and all that. How so? The only incentive to do it is when you have no time at all to play the game just to see the raid, otherwise it's a waste of time (since the loot is pretty much worthless and you can get that level of gear without even setting a foot in a raid). Considering all the alternate gear sources (mythic dungeons that drop exactly the same item level and are doable by freshly leveled characters, low mythic+ keys, any rated PvP even if you have 0 rating, and of course warfronts), it's clear that getting decent gear from LFR is not an option, unless you're incredibly lucky.
So is the problem the idea of having people who don't play the game much witness the raids the worst thing that happened ever, or am I missing something? How does it affect the rest of the player base? I really don't understand the point behind all the hate it gets (especially given that I didn't run LFR even once during this expansion, since there are no worthwhile rewards for people who do other end game content).

The argument goes like this:

With something like LFR in the game, players don't get to experience the journey of progressing through the raid. You just rush through it in an hour and then you are done. You have cleared the raid content. And then there's little motivation to play.

That's how the argument goes in theory.

In reality, people keep playing. They either do LFR every week, on one or multiple characters, they do world quests, reputations, achievements, level new characters, all the stuff people have always done. And the people who don't like LFR just do normal, heroic or mythic. There is no one who is actually negatively affected by LFR and there never has been.

People really have to ask themselves, if LFR is so obviously bad, then why hasn't Blizzard removed it in all those years? Been in the game for 7 years. It would be easy to remove it, and if that made the game better there'd be no reason to keep it in.

Another argument would be that it doesn't really teach players how to play, so it encourages not learning your class.

But reality is, the game is more complex now than ever and bad players have always existed and every player now has to deal with so many more things, it's likely the average player is better now than back in classic.

If anything LFR provides a mode of playing where players can try out the raid encounters without fear of getting yelled at and kicked, which would demotivate them of even trying raiding. They can try out their class and try out the raid encounters. Remember before LFR existed? How hard would it be for a bad player with bad gear to get into a raid group? Someone who is completely inexperienced and has never stepped foot in a raid. How easy would that player have it to learn the encounters and improve, if he can't even get into a group? Think about how hard it is now to get into a group. People complain that everyone asks for that high itemlevel, clear experience, curve achievement, logs from some site, some kind of rating, CV whatever. LFR gives them a chance to even start raiding. Without it, they'd probably stop right there.

In reality LFR doesn't cause any harm and only does good. That LFR is bad is just stuff that keeps getting repeated because of people making videos about it and talking about how hypothetically speaking everything could be better without LFR, but in reality that wouldn't be the case.

[SkagenRora]

Actual challenging game like League of Legends or CS:Go.

That's gotta be the stupidest thing i've read in quite a while

[Tekkommo]

The argument goes like this:

With something like LFR in the game, players don't get to experience the journey of progressing through the raid. You just rush through it in an hour and then you are done. You have cleared the raid content. And then there's little motivation to play.

What about the fact that LFR doesn't release until after a few weeks after the raid is out, and in stages.

Want actual progress, just do heroic/mythic. There is no need to do LFR/normal.

[Jibjub]

LFR offers a path of least resistance. Whether or not it's ultimately "good" for the game is certainly debatable (though the man in charge of game design at the time, Ghostcrawler, has himself admitted that it was not a good idea), but there are -- like with most anything -- positives and negatives.

As the erstwhile leader of a small guild, LFR definitely made things much more difficult (though the issue is not LFR alone). I think LFR has weakened the guild -- which is in essence the core aspect of the social spirit of WoW. Instead of making design choices that reinforce the guild and make the guild a stronger unit and a more necessary unit, most Blizzard's decision in the last several years have actually done the opposite.

There are two side-effects to this. 1) People do not NEED a guild to see more content. This does not seem problematic at first blush, but it leads to another side-effect. 2) Guilds no longer have any attachment to players. Ever since Blizzard has made strides to make the guild obsolete (LFR, cross-realm, etc), guilds have increasingly perceived other players as commodities. When this happens, class balance becomes more of an issue. If you NEED guilds to succeed, then guilds NEED players, and you are much more likely to have a merry band of guildmates to take that "unviable" friend. You were also more likely to see guilds trying to help a struggling guildmate get better because there was loyalty there. With LFR, the pool of raiders has shrunk considerably (why throw yourself at a boss for 4 hours when you can complete the whole raid in half that time?) ... so the social ecosystem is weakened.

Some other arguments are that LFR is so easy (by necessity) that it breeds a class of player who doesn't understand basic game elements... and once these players try to do harder content, the bad habits are hard to correct. I'm not so sure about this one myself. I think seeing the content is great... I just wish Blizzard hadn't taken the lazy way out and instead created a story mode that rewarded you handsomely upon first finishing but then, if you want any loot at all, you'd have to raid.

Those arguing that it's to "see the content" should have no qualms about there being absolutely no loot in LFR. Since I have yet to see a pro-LFRer agree to these terms, I am led to believe that it is indeed NOT about seeing the content. The gear is very much an incentive.

[Deleted]

What about the fact that LFR doesn't release until after a few weeks after the raid is out, and in stages.

Want actual progress, just do heroic/mythic. There is no need to do LFR/normal.

I don't get your argument.

Because it releases in stages, we don't need it?

[Trbn]

Have you ever tried LFR?

it's just boring. In antorus time I had to lfr to gear up new char and I had to lfr for a few resets to gear up. and that was terrible experience, especially long fights like coven

you don't have to pay attention, you don't have to deal dps, you almost don't have to heal. and you don't care about surroundings either because everything feels unnatural and artificial

[Tekkommo]

I don't get your argument.

Because it releases in stages, we don't need it?

"players don't get to experience the journey of progressing through the raid"

LFR isn't available when a raid is released, therefore you can't instantly have simple progress, you have to wait a few weeks for the first wing to be released.

Not arguing against you, I agree with what you say. Just adding to it.

[Deleted]

"players don't get to experience the journey of progressing through the raid"

LFR isn't available when a raid is released, therefore you can't instantly have simple progress, you have to wait a few weeks for the first wing to be released.

Not arguing against you, I agree with what you say. Just adding to it.

ok, I misunderstood

[Eggroll]

I think the excuse of not having enough time is probably only true to a very small amount of players. There are plenty of guild who can clear mythic while devoting 2 days a week / 6-8 hours.

LFR players are known to be toxic, lazy, greedy and incompetent. I also see the excuse of "wanting to see the raid" quite often which is probably only slightly true. If this was really the case, why would you care at all about the gear? If you don't raid or pvp, gear is unnecessary, yet you see so many people complaining that they can't get gear because the content they do only offers so much.

LFR itself isn't a problem for me, it's the players who use it and expect more for doing so little.

1) Why would you need an "excuse" to do or like LFR exactly? And whom are you supposed to excuse yourself to? You perhaps?
2) So you know each and every single LFR player to say that "they" are known to be toxic, lazy, greedy and incompetent, hu? You must have a lot of time on your hands to have that kind of experience. Also: in my personal experience the most toxic and lazy people in LFR are usually heroic or mythic raiders who drop in there for god knows what reason.
3) Now you are telling complete strangers on the internet what they "need" or what is "necessary" for them? How in the world is this your business how someone else plays the game or what he/she enjoys?
4) How can players completely unknown to you cause you any problems whatsoever. Please elaborate, thanks!

[Raelbo]

Much more actually.

Seriously? And you talk about wanting a sincere discussion.

No, honestly, I suggest you go back and have a good look at how you talk to the rest of us on this forum. I'll admit that I have taken a more hostile tone towards you than I would typically do but it really is directly in response to your own tone. In spite of that I have still been, by far, the more civil of the two of us.

No, I just see an arm-long list of nitpickings, I see "this one is factually wrong, this one might be debatable, this one is technically true but shows that the guy only looked at the segment and didn't bother with the overarching idea" and then it means that either I'll have to answer globally (as I did) or I'll have to retort point by point, making a string of disjointed quotes and even smaller nitpickings, which will devolve into exactly the kind of unreadable garbage that I'm speaking about.

Again, I started off by trying to invite you into the kind of discussion you falsely claim you want to have, but you initially responded with the same tone as you started on by simply restating that your initial assertions were purely factual. Then you put together a list, demanding that people like me give reasons for our disagreement. So I did. But you complain. Clearly you're not very big on being reasonable. Or maybe you just cannot handle it when people disagree with you.

Nobody who is willing to have a meaningful discussion does this kind of sliced-up shit. You're just trying to score points, because you have no intention of discussing, you just want to "win".

Nobody who is willing to have a reasonable discussion opens by condescending to the other opinion and implying that the other person is stupid:

Not really hard to understand provided one really want to understand.

Or follows up with shit like:

if you can't even manage this level of brain activity, I guess the ridicule lies in the state of your comprehension. Condolences I guess.

(and yes, this was, indeed before I dissected your argument)

[Moshi]

LFR is really the culmination in players hating the current WoW design philosophy, in reality the problem started long before LFR. It begun at the start of WotLK with Naxxramas.

Before WotLK the design philosophy of the game was radically different, the game was designed from the ground up to teach you how to play and insisted that the player became developed enough to reach a certain standard. The current design philosophy is now players can do whatever they want and instead of putting barriers up in front of the player to force them to develop their skills and coordination with other players they now remove every barrier possible preventing the players from growing by overcoming adversity and challenge.

Vanilla leveling was intentionally difficult, the idea was that leveling would prepare you for the endgame rather than just be a mindless time sink. The idea was to force you to think about utilizing your full arsenal of abilities and items available to the game. Suddenly all those abilities you never used became important, suddenly those talents you mindlessly spent could be spent on something different to help you, suddenly all those random food and potion items you picked up from looting might actually be useful. You never use this stuff now when you level, it's not until you hit mythic dungeons or mythic raiding that you really start learning how to play your class and finally think about using your defensives, consumables, switching talents, etc.

The other aspect of the former design philosophy was to force you to interact with other players in order to overcome hard challenges and this fostered a greater sense of community. A sense that is so strong even today that Blizzard is now re-releasing WoW Classic because players desperately want that feeling again. For example when I was leveling a Night Elf Warrior in Darkshore the quests I was doing were hard so I grouped with another warrior to complete it, then we leveled together for the rest of the zone and eventually I joined his guild, we did dungeons together and relationships formed. This kind of interaction would never occur in the current incarnation of WoW because content is so easy now and if it requires a group I can press a button and instantly join one with players sharded in from who knows where. This is where the problem which LFR stems from.

You see LFR is not difficult, at all. It is designed so that you basically cannot lose and therefore none of your actions matter. There is no expectation that you get better as a player, that you utilize your brain cells. People don't come together to form a raid group, they don't come together to figure out how to kill the boss, they don't figure out how to do mechanics. People have this idea that the content is the raid experience, therefore if people complete the raid they get that raid experience, but that is not raiding. The raid content doesn't matter, it never has, it's simply an excuse for a group of players to get together and be challenged, to coordinate with each other, to play their class to their maximum potential, to experience adversity and overcome it with like minded players in the process forming relationships between players. In LFR you do not experience this, you experience a soulless train ride, this is what new players see when they play the game and they just end up quitting because it's boring, why would you raid LFR when there are a ton of games on the market that offer a better experience? It turns out all these things that were thought were inconsequential or designed for convince actually significantly impact the overall experience negatively.

At the end of the day those "elitist" people that you think hate you because you don't play the game past an arbitrary amount of hours, don't hate you. They want you to experience what they experienced because at the end of the day they need recruits, they need competition, the "World" of Warcraft is more lively as a whole, etc, etc. The game overall becomes better with a bigger community and we know this because it has happened in the past during Vanilla and the Burning Crusade but LFR prevents players from joining this community because they never develop the skills and attitude necessary to group with other people so they just end up quitting. Now the high end dungeon/raiding scene is simply a dwindling number of players left over from expansions past that play a meager 9-12 hours per week and only to raid instead of a thriving competitive scene with a sense of community.

Blizzard have chosen to go the route that brings them the most money. They chose to appeal to everything that has a pulse and whilst this brings in A LOT of players the turnaround for those players is also HUGE. How many people do you think quit because they completed LFR, never experiencing true raiding, do all the world content which isn't challenging at all, and then got frustrated at lower mythic keys because no one was ever taught how to play at that level? This is why the game isn't growing and is in a state of constant undeath. I find it ironic because when Blizzard appealed to a smaller base of a players the game had significantly higher population and was actually growing and you can track it over time as they started implementing these changes in WotLK that caused it to decline, yet they keep doing it anyway, perhaps they want guilds to die so that there is more demand of character transfers and faction changes (which seems to be the major financial driving force of WoW now)? Who knows?

Anyway TLDR LFR is an abberation of the true raiding experience and doesn't manage to capture any of the magic surrounding it. LFR actively stifles player development which in turn stifles guild development and player retention long term. If LFR didn't exist the game would be better off because whilst you wouldn't attract as many players, your retention of players would be a lot higher. WoW will have no longterm growth until this design philosophy is changed and hopefully the re-release of WoW Classic should make these aspects a lot more obvious to the developers and tantalizing enough that they can actually have a financial case for implementing it again, as if 10 million plus subs wasn't enough.

[Deadite]

Show me your amory then.

To prove i do LFR? I don't mean to brag but i have done LFR multiple times. /flex

[Whistl3r]

LFR should provide players with the knowledge and gear to progress on to harder modes but it does neither effectively. So whats the point?

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too much to quote

Totally agree man. I raid one night with a small group of friends from vanilla . We do heroic, and with our composition and numbers its a good challenge. Its the only part of the game where I get real satisfaction. The rest of the week just feels like I'm on rails unless I can get enough friends online to do a mythic+.

There is zero accountability for being a jerk or for being awful anymore and that has just led to worse behaviour and worse experiences for others.

[willemh]

LFR is in a far better spot as it used to be. I no longer feel forced to do it at all as a semi serious player so it caters the exact playerbase it was designed for so thats great!

[MisterBigglez]

1) Why would you need an "excuse" to do or like LFR exactly? And whom are you supposed to excuse yourself to? You perhaps?
2) So you know each and every single LFR player to say that "they" are known to be toxic, lazy, greedy and incompetent, hu? You must have a lot of time on your hands to have that kind of experience. Also: in my personal experience the most toxic and lazy people in LFR are usually heroic or mythic raiders who drop in there for god knows what reason.
3) Now you are telling complete strangers on the internet what they "need" or what is "necessary" for them? How in the world is this your business how someone else plays the game or what he/she enjoys?
4) How can players completely unknown to you cause you any problems whatsoever. Please elaborate, thanks!

1. The excuse is not doing LFR, the excuse is saying you don't want to do HC or Mythic because you don't have the time. When really, you don't need much time at all to do either. Plenty of guilds out there that clear hc in one day then don't raid for the rest of the week. You mean to tell me you can't spend a couple hours a week with a guild clearing hc? LFR can take even longer sometimes.

2. Yes, the average LFR player is like this, but maybe I should have replaced the "and" with an "or" instead of saying they are all 4. LFR has been a thing for years and I have alts that I like to play so I have my fair share of experience playing with LFR players. Don't act like this is a new thing and that I just spend all my time in there to get my opinion of what players are like in there. And yes i've also come across hc/mythic raiders who do lose their patience at these players, but in their defense, they wouldn't have to get annoyed if those who entered actually spent a few mins to look up boss mechanics or a guide on their class, instead of doing 4k dps.

3. A player can want what they want, doesn't mean they need it. I want a 60 inch TV in my bedroom, I don't need one though cause I probably wouldn't use it that much. Same with gear. Gear is a necessary evil to reach the minimum requirements to clear content, if you don't bother clearing content, what does gear do for you exactly?

4. This argument is stupid. Just because something happens to someone else and not you, doesn't mean you can't have an opinion on the matter. I wasn't born during WWII, but should I not say that I hate Nazis and Hitler because of what they did? LFR could have been a great thing. I personally took advantage of being able to access the raid and get myself some extra gear to push myself into trying raids. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case for many players and instead thats all they do, but still want more. If you want more, go and earn it, join a guild, clear content, get better gear. Just because you pay the same amount as everyone else, doesn't mean you deserve the best items.

[Deleted]

Unfulfilled people enjoy complaining about things they have no reason to be bothered by.

[Deleted]

1) Why would you need an "excuse" to do or like LFR exactly? And whom are you supposed to excuse yourself to? You perhaps?
2) So you know each and every single LFR player to say that "they" are known to be toxic, lazy, greedy and incompetent, hu? You must have a lot of time on your hands to have that kind of experience. Also: in my personal experience the most toxic and lazy people in LFR are usually heroic or mythic raiders who drop in there for god knows what reason.
3) Now you are telling complete strangers on the internet what they "need" or what is "necessary" for them? How in the world is this your business how someone else plays the game or what he/she enjoys?
4) How can players completely unknown to you cause you any problems whatsoever. Please elaborate, thanks!

You sont have to know them. If you have atleast slight bit of intellect you should realize that this desing encourages this exact behavour. You can look on other games if you want to what uses matchmaking and how players behave in those enviroments.

[shaunika123]

Heh, my personal theory is that 99 percent of all LFR hate comes down to one thing and one thing only... gear. If LFR gave no gear whatsoever and people somehow still flocked to it and ran it night and day, we would barely ever hear a single complaint.

Think of Pet Battles. Almost any “perceived” negative aspect of LFR can be applied to Pet Battles. They don’t teach you how to play your character... they do not encourage the social aspect of the game... you don’t need a guild to do them and you can get rewards from them even if you are bad at the game... but there is no gear, so almost no one complains. (Sure, it’s the internet, so SOMEONE will complain, but very very few will.)

the difference is, that pet abttles are their own thing.

not a watered down version of another thing.

raids are one of the biggest draws of the game, pet battles barely exist. there's a difference.

I dont really care that LFR gives gear(I'm a little bothered that it looks the same as the actual raid gear, but that's the extent of it), but you could imagine the outrage LFR players would feel if it didnt :P

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Well the problem that "hardcore and casuals" meet exists since vanila, so LfD/LfR are the new iterations of that. Major changes to that came with more dedicated sources on "how to play WoW", realy starting with BC. The "elitist douchebag" with "OGOGOGOO!!!!!" "L2P N00B" was born on additional information on websites about how to run a instance/play your class/ do a BG, since Blizzards was/is still to lazy to make a tutorial or give useful information in game(the famous "polished blizzard perfection").
Automated Matchmade content is on pair with the "DPS lfg dayli hero" you have no clue who this person is, but you try it anyway because your guild/friend are ocupied and you want to run a instance. You could and still can make friends (and enemies) in matchmades, still happens. Only thing that increased was frequenzy, so you got to know a lot more of the community.

you could select who you invite at least to a certain extent though. the point is that there was some agency involved with who you group with.

sure, you were still in groups with different people in vanilla, but it was still the result of a long and tenius group building, which put more responsibility on more parties.
now that getting a group is so easy and you're matched with people you'll never ever see again cos of crossrealm. it has no weight.

The vast majority of this game has never been hard at all. Again, you could clear MC with half your raid barely being at their keyboard. And for all the hype it gets, leveling in Classic or TBC was never hard either. The difficulty in this game has always been very top-heavy, and that's never going to change.

But for some reason it's a giant problem when LFR is easy as well, as if raids were the special snowflake content that isn't allowed to be easy. Bullshit to that, I say.

comparatively to the times it has been.

and in vanilla if you pulled more than 2 mobs you usually died(unless you were a hunter), or had to use consumables, nowadays you can pull 30. how is that not easier?

you couldnt just rush into a camp of mobs, you have to pull them out one by one, because they ran away and chainpulled each other etc. you had to put infinitely more thought into leveling in vanilla.

[Todesbote]

I know it's a 5 year old video and I really don't agree with/like Preach on everything he says but this is the best explanation for what's wrong with LFR. It's still valid today and explains the whole problem in ~10 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFWh9aY4pas