What happened to Blizzards stance of end LFR bosses being wipeable?

[beelgers]

While I philosophically agree with the OP, this whole thing is just a symptom of a larger problem. Difficulty and rewards have no connection to each other anymore. Not that LFR is ever "difficult" but clearing the last boss in a raid - even LFR, should probably feel like you participated. Still, this is all hardly limited to LFR. Why risk wiping in LFR for 370(?) loot when you get an automatic 400 from the warfront every 3 weeks? Another 1-2 chances at another 400 from the warfront boss every 3 weeks. World quests emissaries dropping 385s multiple times a week and that loot can TF up to 425?

To put it another way, with all the places you can get 385-425 gear for basically pulling a lever (some of it guaranteed), it might be frustrating to some to wipe a few times on a boss that has a *chance* to drop 370.

TLDR: Rewards and difficulty and their connection to each other are screwed up everywhere in the game. LFR is just another victim of it.

[cparle87]

No they are not
The highest difficulty is that.
The lowest difficulty is easier then Molten Core because you get buffed for dying in the fire

- - - Updated - - -



This anecdote is so funny cause not only is Nintendo Hard a well known trope, several Nintendo Games withhold Story and True Endings from you if you dont finish it on the hardest difficulty, or rewarded you with a basic "u suck" screen for not performing well eenough

Good job pal

Blizz has done that a few times in the past also, notably with the mythic Imperator Mar'gok, mythic Archimonde, and mythic Gul'dan fights.

[Fistfighter]

Had a bit of my Dreadwake sub left so I figured I'd look at Jaina on LFR. Big mistake.

What happened to the KJ like difficulty that the devs said end bosses on LFR would equate to? She's easy as hell. Yes LFR is supposed to be easy I know but I remember back in Legion they said they found KJ the perfect difficulty in Tomb of Sargeras for an end LFR boss. She is literally a 70 mil HP loot pinata. At least Lei Shen LFR and Kil'Jaeden LFR actually threw something at you and had risk to it.

At least in FF14 with 24 mans you can actually wipe from messing up mechanics once or twice. Here you literally have free reign to fuck up as much as you want.

Blizzard seriously need to take a look at FF14 and it's 24 mans when designing LFR. The 24 mans in that game are still easy and doable by the average player but have mechanics that will wipe you.

You know what, you can't control your group in LFR, so it would be extremely unfair if one bad apple could wipe your group. Nobody is going to LFR seeking challenge.
I remember back in MoP, Garrosh LFR was actually harder than Garrosh on HC. That's not even fun anymore, your skill plays zero role in wheter you will or will not suceed in killing the boss, all it comes to is wheter you get matched with some russian or polak that don't know english and won't listen to your raid tactics.

But I also remember Archimonde LFR, where I would que as Tank to get the bonus satchel and then proceed to tank and kill him as a Windwalker, usually dealing 50% of the raid dmg. And that fight was just laughably easy.

Jaina is a nice balance between those two. She's not hard, but you can still wipe pretty easy if you have a group full of mouth breathers. Unlike Warfronts, where even 20 mouth breathers can ace it.

[cparle87]

Maybe you should check the topic you are?

Fact is the OP is right and you just argued against yourself. You cherry picked a anecdote (which is not a great line of Argumentation btw.) and even that, a literal child toy maker company at the time, assumed their player were less entitled.

Thats how shit the game design is currrently

Not really. I don't have a problem with them hiding the "true" storyline ending behind a mythic mode, I was simply pointing out that Blizz has done that just as Nintendo did. I also don't have a problem with there being a super easy tourist mode, but Ohwell does. Ohwells feels offended that other people are able to play the game at a lower level that he feels they don't deserve.

[ydraw]

No they are not
The highest difficulty is that.
The lowest difficulty is easier then Molten Core because you get buffed for dying in the firel

Molten Core was the highest difficulty back then. Current highest difficulty is orders of magnitude harder.

[cparle87]

I think there is general distiniction what "playing the game on lower level" means.
When people were to bad, or had not the time, in vanilla they maybe optedout more for dungeons and leveling. This was also content, even confirmed by several devs and ex-devs, for casuals. Thats telling through your game Design to players that some content isnt for you, thats also how Nintendo did. Heck they still do it, their recent released Main titles are some of the more difficult ones, even removed difficilty settings.

Now we have nothing to aspire but deluded content that is spoonfed in Blizzard games. Thats not the same thing.

And being told that some content is not for you will simply not jive in today's market. If we transposed BC's raiding system up to Legion, for instance here's what we'd have: Half the raiders would never progress past EN and a boss or two in ToV (T4), about a quarter of raiders would see Kil'jaeden (T5), and only the best would ever see Argus (T6). Stop and ponder this for a moment. Having nothing to raid for an entire 2 years but EN. Having those 3 raids you're not good enough to even set foot in. Can you imagine the outcry from today's gaming audience?

The highest level gamers get the best gear, the titles, the mogs, and sometimes the secret endings. But there's still a mode for most everyone else.

[cparle87]

This is such a strawman argument that got disproven so many times. Dark Souls proves that its works and even the last Zelda came on the Market with one difficulty option.

They turned the game to a facebook game in WoD and despite "todays market" loving this types of games accorrding to mmochamp didnt turn out great, no?

Stop pretending that the people you refer want to even play mmos.

And how many players does Dark Souls have compared to WoW's? 5% at most?

Your last line pretty much sums up your entire argument. "Don't touch my game you filthy casuals, if you don't play it my way you shouldn't be here." I'm done here.

[ONCHEhap]

I mean

My group wiped 8 times on second intermission because they didn't have the DPS to kill the wall :P

[Mardux]

Like... i dont even


That doesnt change the fact what i stated, if you happen to overrread it.
The easiest difficulty is by magnitudes easier.
So no overall "raiding" is not at his hardest, the top difficulty is.

You insist on continuing to claim things are facts, yet you and OP have only provided opinions.

[Thagrynor]

Had a bit of my Dreadwake sub left so I figured I'd look at Jaina on LFR. Big mistake.

What happened to the KJ like difficulty that the devs said end bosses on LFR would equate to? She's easy as hell. Yes LFR is supposed to be easy I know but I remember back in Legion they said they found KJ the perfect difficulty in Tomb of Sargeras for an end LFR boss. She is literally a 70 mil HP loot pinata. At least Lei Shen LFR and Kil'Jaeden LFR actually threw something at you and had risk to it.

At least in FF14 with 24 mans you can actually wipe from messing up mechanics once or twice. Here you literally have free reign to fuck up as much as you want.

Blizzard seriously need to take a look at FF14 and it's 24 mans when designing LFR. The 24 mans in that game are still easy and doable by the average player but have mechanics that will wipe you.

Some boss designs allow for that. Some don't. You get some bosses that have mechanics that can be scaled slightly lower to still provide challenge and potential wiping/death if you mess them up. The others that are designed in ways that, the ability either kills you or doesn't. On Normal+, that is fine. But in LFR, there is no way to scale those types of abilities down and have them mean anything, so they get removed entirely. There are also abilities that require a lot of communication to handle. In LFR with zero communication, it would make those kinds of things impossible. No one would ever finish LFR, so those abilities are removed.

If the last boss is designed with a lot of those types of removed abilities, then they become loot pinatas. It isn't a change in policy, it is just a result of how the boss encounter was designed with regards to how it would be in higher difficulties.

Next raid could have a boss that is damn near a reproduction of the difficulty/wipability of KJ on LFR with different mechanics. Policies like this are not always enforceable.

[HoodKazekage]

Idk why anyone would expect LFR to be hard lmao. If you want a challenge do mythic or heroic. Always a nice challenge, atleast for my guild.

[Polarthief]

I say this as an Uldir CE and 5/9M Mythic Raider, I don't see the bosses being too easy. Haven't done Jaina yet on LFR, but from what I remember in regards to Uldir LFR (especially G'huun), I've seen plenty of wipes in there, so I don't really know what you're talking about.

If anything, LFR should be even easier, at least in regards to DPS checks. People doing 3-4k DPS are in LFR for a reason and they definitely shouldn't feel bad for pulling such low numbers in the Story Mode difficulty. Wiping should be a thing reserved for Normal+. If you're thinking to yourself "you shouldn't be pulling 3k in group content", then who the hell are you to decide who is and isn't allowed to play babby mode? This mode clearly isn't for you so maybe go do some normals or heroics.

Now you might be thinking I'm crazy for thinking stuff like this but it's just how I feel. I'm not happy about LFR to begin with, but it's been with WoW for just about half of its life cycle (12 tiers without LFR, 11 tiers with LFR) and with how low the sub count has gone, I highly doubt it's leaving any time soon.

[Raelbo]

Had a bit of my Dreadwake sub left so I figured I'd look at Jaina on LFR. Big mistake.

What happened to the KJ like difficulty that the devs said end bosses on LFR would equate to? She's easy as hell. Yes LFR is supposed to be easy I know but I remember back in Legion they said they found KJ the perfect difficulty in Tomb of Sargeras for an end LFR boss. She is literally a 70 mil HP loot pinata. At least Lei Shen LFR and Kil'Jaeden LFR actually threw something at you and had risk to it.

At least in FF14 with 24 mans you can actually wipe from messing up mechanics once or twice. Here you literally have free reign to fuck up as much as you want.

Blizzard seriously need to take a look at FF14 and it's 24 mans when designing LFR. The 24 mans in that game are still easy and doable by the average player but have mechanics that will wipe you.

I am not sure that trying to draw conclusions from a single sample of the fight is worthwhile. LFR is, of course, trivial compared to Mythic (and even heroic). Therefore if enough of the people in the LFR group have mythic/heroic experience, it will make the fight trivial in LFR. That does not mean that the fight is trivial for the average LFR raider, or that it is wipe proof.

And bear in mind that this is the first week of release for the wing. It's likely that a lot of better players are going to be in the queues while it's still fresh.

Last week I was in LFR groups that failed on 2 bosses in BoD. I ended up having to explain the tactics to the raid. Other weeks it has been a literal steamroll.




PS: I haven't actually tried out the last wing in LFR yet, so this theory from me is based on other LFR experiences. However, since there are people here who have commented that they have wiped on Jaina in LFR, it seems to be validate what I am saying

[Sxq]

I wiped on lfr champions of the light so I think anything is possible

My opinion on lfr is that maybe certain mechanics could be more impactful... but overall lfr should have hp levels nerfed to account for the dps that lfr players do. A group of near-minimum ilvl players with terrible dps will wipe all day. Jaina ice wall is a good example. Not only is it not super intuitive on where exactly the wall spawns or how to target it, but you need to kill it or the raid wipes.

[Raelbo]

If anything, LFR should be even easier, at least in regards to DPS checks. People doing 3-4k DPS are in LFR for a reason and they definitely shouldn't feel bad for pulling such low numbers in the Story Mode difficulty. Wiping should be a thing reserved for Normal+. If you're thinking to yourself "you shouldn't be pulling 3k in group content", then who the hell are you to decide who is and isn't allowed to play babby mode? This mode clearly isn't for you so maybe go do some normals or heroics.

I'd tend to agree with this.

LFR should absolutely be clearable with people of average ability (and in this game that means somewhat below the level of the average normal raider) who are doing their best. I don't entirely agree that LFR should be wipe proof, but those wipes should never be due to a lack of ability and reserved only for a lack of effort during the encounters. If half the group is afk, or watching Netflix, or 3/5 healers are dpsing, then absolutely, wipes should be not only possible, but entirely desirable.

The art of LFR tuning should be about making it engaging without being punishing.

[ydraw]

Like... i dont even


That doesnt change the fact what i stated, if you happen to overrread it.
The easiest difficulty is by magnitudes easier.

Why do you care about the easiest difficulty though, if you're looking for a challenge? You should only care what the hardest difficulty is. Otherwise you're just complaining about something that doesn't concern you.

Until you've killed Mythic Jaina you don't get to complain that raiding is "too easy". It's not too easy, you're just complaining about content that isn't aimed at you, mostly out of spite for lesser skilled players.

What you're doing is the equivalent of buying a 20 piece jigsaw puzzle meant for 5 year olds and then complaining that it's too easy.

[anveena]

LFR being too easy or hard entirely depends on the group you get stuck with. With it's target audience it isn't a cakewalk.

[Adaren]

1. Kil'jaeden was intentionally in his own LFR wing. They could have put him with Maiden / Avatar, but they gave him his own wing because you were expected to wipe on him a few times.
2. My LFR grouped wiped on Jaina yesterday because people didn't kill the wall in time. We got it on the second try though.

[Daevied]

By the end of the tier?

1630 guilds killed gahuun mythic and logged it. So probly around a couple thousand guilds,
Most seem to get stuck at zek, with 4533 guilds stuck there.

13,540 guilds killed at least 1 mythic boss,
2940 only killed the first boss.
4533 killes taloc and mother but got stuck on zek.
Rest of the bosses up to gahuun u had a couple hundred each guilds that got stuck.
1630 guilds killed gahuun.

So if the guild had a set 20 ( unlikely) that's 32,600 people got cutting edge last tier. Not counting non public log guilds and pugs.

Considering uldir was a stand out raid for the difficulty of its last boss and tight restrictions on class comp, (most guild who killed zek at the relevant gear needed a blood dk, and gahuun for most of the tier needed warlock stacking) and being the first tier of an expansion, and not a very good expansion which lead to the mass guild die off starting in November, that's still an awful lot of players.

Any one who takes raiding or has taken raiding with a level of seriousness, has at least 1 cutting edge achievement. Same with Gladiator for pvp. Key stone master is laughable as an example of a hard achievement.

The difficulty in mythic raiding is simply having the right classes with the right gear and keeping 20 players interested in this shit game long enough.

32600 ppl of around 1 million active users is pretty low still

[Monster Hunter]

32600 ppl of around 1 million active users is pretty low still

I'm wondering how active, active is. I mean there's not much else in the game bar m+, pvp and raiding. And if your what I see as active as in most nights then getting one of those 3 achievements at least once in one of those tiers/seasons is pritty inevitable.

I play maybe once a week now if I can be arsed. So I'm subbed atm but I'm not active.