Why exactly are people so anti-LFR?

[grandgato]

Normal, in relative dififculty terms, is as easy as LFR. Context - the difficultly difference between both Normal and LFR is for the most part, negligable, to people who know the content, mechanics and have some understanding of their class/role. With that being said obviously there are destinct differences between LFR and Normal, mechanics management, automated qeueuing, gated access (LFG tool or guilds). I believe LFR could be removed and Normal serve in its place with little to no change - personally i would drop the anonimity around automated queuing and remain normal as an organised group setting LFG or Guild based.

Too much of the narrative revolves around participating in raids now for this to be acceptable. Blizzard should set the requirements for the easiest difficulty level, not other players.

[SirCowdog]

The design & structure of raid content is contrary to the method by which LFR allows access to it, especially with a dwindling player pool, it was a nice extended experiment and worth trying, but i think the negative impacts on the structure of guilds and social constructs in the game far outweigh the benefit of "one click access".

I suspect that cross realm tech creating a much larger pool of players, a pool where names are duplicated, had more to do with damaging the sense of community than anything LFR could have potentially done.

Consider LFR in a single-server environment. Players who consistently AFK or spew toxic behavior are going to be remembered since they can't just sink into the sea of players that a cross realm environment provides. Furthermore, their bad behavior would carry over to their reputation on the server for other content, such as dungeons or open world groups.

I think that we'd see much different results from LFR if individual server communities were still a closed environment. And I think that demonizing LFR(and matchmaking in general) is a limited view.

[kaminaris]

I suspect that cross realm tech creating a much larger pool of players, a pool where names are duplicated, had more to do with damaging the sense of community than anything LFR could have potentially done.

That's one of the logical fallacies. There is no community if you consider you are tied to a random dudes you didn't even know. Similar to crowds in bus. According to some "classic players" that is what makes "community". No it doesn't.

Guilds and literal Communities makes "Communities". Not server bound people. Community is a group of people who share couple of your interests and you willingly join them.

Hard bounding players to server is actually harmful.

[Elias01]

That's one of the logical fallacies. There is no community if you consider you are tied to a random dudes you didn't even know. Similar to crowds in bus. According to some "classic players" that is what makes "community". No it doesn't.

Guilds and literal Communities makes "Communities". Not server bound people. Community is a group of people who share couple of your interests and you willingly join them.

Hard bounding players to server is actually harmful.

No it is not.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

This is the problem with LFR. The long queue times mean that they're probably losing subscribers and they're going to have to put in something that encourages raiders to go into LFR and take the tank spots in order to reduce the queue. That's what the MOP and WOD legendary quest lines were there to do. It's why valor used to drop in LFR and not in other difficulties.

Without some sort of reward pushing higher level players into LFR, it doesn't work because no one will tank. And higher level players hate LFR. Every time they limit the rewards, all the higher level players bail and queue times go through the roof, pissing off the casuals. When they add in rewards, the higher levels come back but they are all pissed of that they have to do it.

It's a disaster.

This is the only problem I have with lfr, I dont want to get in there as a mythic player like in Legion and MOP there should be no rewards for good players....
remove trinkets, valor/legendarie baits in there, the other gear can stay.

[scarletanh]

No it is not.

You need to give some reasoning or else you can just stop unnecessary comment like this.
My view on community is just as kaminaris has said. Forcefully making people being together doesnt magically hatch a community

[Yriel]

While focusing your design philosphy on the grabbing, and keeping, the casual player base, makes sense from a revenue standpoint, it erroded the foundations that made the game popular in the first place. Social contructs, risk vs reward, effort & time spent were all impacted by increased accessibility and thus the value of the content became dimished.

That is just not true. Even when WoW released it was successful because it was the most casual MMORPG out there. It had quite some competition but they all died off because everyone wanted to play the fast-food MMO.
So it's just consequent that they continue on the path that made them successful.

[SirCowdog]

That's one of the logical fallacies. There is no community if you consider you are tied to a random dudes you didn't even know. Similar to crowds in bus. According to some "classic players" that is what makes "community". No it doesn't.

Guilds and literal Communities makes "Communities". Not server bound people. Community is a group of people who share couple of your interests and you willingly join them.

Hard bounding players to server is actually harmful.

The other part of the point I was making(that you edited out) is an important bit of context: "Players who consistently AFK or spew toxic behavior are going to be remembered since they can't just sink into the sea of players that a cross realm environment provides."

So I don't agree that having smaller groups of players(single servers) is harmful. The smaller scale of the community means that it's more difficult to get away with being a bad actor. The signal-to-noise ratio is much larger. It means a player can more easily get to know those around them, and also be known. Those "random dudes you didn't even know" start to become familiar names in a single-server environment.

There are, of course, other factors to this equation. A much larger world that spreads players out over a wider area. The open world being more or less pointless after level cap. Content becoming invalidated with each patch. The complete lack of any game-based reason to invest or stay in a guild(perks, guild housing, etc).

As I said: Focusing in and demonizing LFR is a limited view. Much like dumping mentos into diet soda, I think that it's the combination of various factors that hurt the sense of community rather than any one thing on its own.

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Forcefully making people being together doesnt magically hatch a community

I tend to agree that trying to force community won't work. However, having smaller groups of people in a smaller area WILL create higher potential for communities to form.

I'm definitely not one of those Vanilla purists. I'm probably the opposite. But one of the things that Vanilla did get right was the single-server system. Unfortunately I don't think just closing off servers will be a simple fix. There are more elements to this problem, as I described above in my reply to Kamanaris.

[Hittion]

That is just not true. Even when WoW released it was successful because it was the most casual MMORPG out there. It had quite some competition but they all died off because everyone wanted to play the fast-food MMO.
So it's just consequent that they continue on the path that made them successful.

It wasn't and just because something struck a sweet spot doesn't mean you keep going further and further. I take my coffee with two creams not my cream with two spoons of coffee...

[khazmodan]

The other part of the point I was making(that you edited out) is an important bit of context: "Players who consistently AFK or spew toxic behavior are going to be remembered since they can't just sink into the sea of players that a cross realm environment provides."

So I don't agree that having smaller groups of players(single servers) is harmful. The smaller scale of the community means that it's more difficult to get away with being a bad actor. The signal-to-noise ratio is much larger. It means a player can more easily get to know those around them, and also be known. Those "random dudes you didn't even know" start to become familiar names in a single-server environment.

There are, of course, other factors to this equation. A much larger world that spreads players out over a wider area. The open world being more or less pointless after level cap. Content becoming invalidated with each patch. The complete lack of any game-based reason to invest or stay in a guild(perks, guild housing, etc).

As I said: Focusing in and demonizing LFR is a limited view. Much like dumping mentos into diet soda, I think that it's the combination of various factors that hurt the sense of community rather than any one thing on its own.

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I tend to agree that trying to force community won't work. However, having smaller groups of people in a smaller area WILL create higher potential for communities to form.

I'm definitely not one of those Vanilla purists. I'm probably the opposite. But one of the things that Vanilla did get right was the single-server system. Unfortunately I don't think just closing off servers will be a simple fix. There are more elements to this problem, as I described above in my reply to Kamanaris.

Well said, LFR is not the only thing that hurt community; phasing, eliminating group loot, designing questing for solo play, meaningless professions and many other things contributed to a collapse of all but the most determined guilds.

Without some real rpg developer love, this game will continue to go down a collection game path that is just not enough for most players to have any long term excitement about.

[Ekis]

Thats highly subjective.

Not necessarily.

Coming from a game which based its metrics heavily on how many people were subscribed to now no longer depending on subscription numbers and more on Shop purchases, it stands to reason that BFA has room for improvement.

[kaminaris]

The other part of the point I was making(that you edited out) is an important bit of context: "Players who consistently AFK or spew toxic behavior are going to be remembered since they can't just sink into the sea of players that a cross realm environment provides."

You sound like toxic people suddenly becomes nice and fun when they being tied to server - nope, that does not happen. Toxic people are toxic regardless of anything. I've had toxic people in my previous guild, they were toxic to the end.

So I don't agree that having smaller groups of players(single servers) is harmful. The smaller scale of the community means that it's more difficult to get away with being a bad actor. The signal-to-noise ratio is much larger. It means a player can more easily get to know those around them, and also be known. Those "random dudes you didn't even know" start to become familiar names in a single-server environment.

It doesn't make it difficult, had ultra toxic people in a group of 25 players

There are, of course, other factors to this equation. A much larger world that spreads players out over a wider area. The open world being more or less pointless after level cap. Content becoming invalidated with each patch. The complete lack of any game-based reason to invest or stay in a guild(perks, guild housing, etc).

That is only a problem with crap guild system without perks. Having more players to recruit is gigantic plus cause you can get rid of toxic people and find better ones. With small community you have to stick with toxics unless you want to have no raids.

As I said: Focusing in and demonizing LFR is a limited view. Much like dumping mentos into diet soda, I think that it's the combination of various factors that hurt the sense of community rather than any one thing on its own.

Fuck that "sense of community" I want to be able to choose players I play with. Not be lumped together with some bunch of randoms. Community is what guilds are for, not servers. Also we have literal "communities" now.

I tend to agree that trying to force community won't work. However, having smaller groups of people in a smaller area WILL create higher potential for communities to form.

And being stuck with them.

I'm definitely not one of those Vanilla purists. I'm probably the opposite. But one of the things that Vanilla did get right was the single-server system. Unfortunately I don't think just closing off servers will be a simple fix. There are more elements to this problem, as I described above in my reply to Kamanaris.

That is one of the reason why I don't play classic cause my friends choose different servers, not just one, like 5 different servers. Can't play with them now.

[grandgato]

Well said, LFR is not the only thing that hurt community; phasing, eliminating group loot, designing questing for solo play, meaningless professions and many other things contributed to a collapse of all but the most determined guilds.

Wut? At what point has questing NOT been solo play?

[SirCowdog]

You sound like toxic people suddenly becomes nice and fun when they being tied to server - nope, that does not happen. Toxic people are toxic regardless of anything. I've had toxic people in my previous guild, they were toxic to the end.

That's actually not at all what I said. I said it's harder to get away with those kinds of actions. In a smaller group of people, it's also easier to get recognized for good actions.

Yes, toxic people will still be toxic. But their actions are more likely to have real consequences in a single-server community. I'm not wearing rose-tinted goggles here. People were still shitty even in Vanilla. But those people got remembered, and often didn't get groups or loot without resorting to being a ninja. And even that got remembered. There were many people that acted this way on my PVP server(Daggerspine) who eventually had to start over or transfer to another server because their name was completely ruined.

Is this a perfect solution? Of course not. But it's something that's definitely lacking in a cross-realm environment.

It doesn't make it difficult, had ultra toxic people in a group of 25 players

As I've explained: It makes it easier to recognize people, both good and bad.

With small community you have to stick with toxics unless you want to have no raids.

This is absolutely not true, or at the very least is extremely hyperbolic, especially with flexible raid sizes.

Fuck that "sense of community" I want to be able to choose players I play with. Not be lumped together with some bunch of randoms. Community is what guilds are for, not servers. Also we have literal "communities" now.

I don't have a response to this, since I'm not even sure what you're referencing in my quoted text. :/

That is one of the reason why I don't play classic cause my friends choose different servers, not just one, like 5 different servers. Can't play with them now.

"Can't" or "Won't"?

As I said before, there are lots of tools to move around servers in order to meet up with your friends. If you don't want to use them, that's a problem which is as much you as it is the game or the service.

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Wut? At what point has questing NOT been solo play?

In vanilla and TBC there were many quests, and entire open world sections of zones(Jintha'alor for example) that generally couldn't be done solo. Elite mobs that required a group to take down, and often had fairly decent rewards.

It's not so much that the entire questing experience wasn't mostly solo, but rather that mob health and damage was high enough to make grouping more appealing, and often time more rewarding. This is something that's generally missing from more modern WoW expansions. Sure...you CAN group. But there's no real benefit. And the grouping that does happen is for raw efficiency via a WQ auto-group addon.

[grandgato]

In vanilla and TBC there were many quests, and entire open world sections of zones(Jintha'alor for example) that generally couldn't be done solo. Elite mobs that required a group to take down, and often had fairly decent rewards.

It's not so much that the entire questing experience wasn't mostly solo, but rather that mob health and damage was high enough to make grouping more appealing, and often time more rewarding. This is something that's generally missing from more modern WoW expansions. Sure...you CAN group. But there's no real benefit. And the grouping that does happen is for raw efficiency via a WQ auto-group addon.

I am all for more small group content, so i sure wouldn't be against a larger number of group quests. It's really easy these days with the Pre-Made Group Finder tool being integrated into the quest UI making it easy to find and start groups. It kind of felt like initial Nazjatar was tuned a little higher to help encourage this, so perhaps we will see more of this going forward.

That said, i hope this wouldn't be at the expense of solo content. To this day i firmly believe most people play World of Warcraft as a largely Single Player RPG with occasional ventures into group/raid/pvp content.

[Osmeric]

It wasn't and just because something struck a sweet spot doesn't mean you keep going further and further. I take my coffee with two creams not my cream with two spoons of coffee...

And yet, how likely is it they hit that sweet spot right off the bat? More likely, their stats and observations told them the game still wasn't fully on target.

[Hittion]

And yet, how likely is it they hit that sweet spot right off the bat? More likely, their stats and observations told them the game still wasn't fully on target.

If so then I would throw those tools away considering how they didn't expect classic to expode far past the popularity of retail and sustain its numbers.

WoW seems to be mirroring runescape were its efforts to open the game up slowly killed it and what drew people to it orginally is still what the market is after.

[Wingspan]

If so then I would throw those tools away considering how they didn't expect classic to expode far past the popularity of retail and sustain its numbers.

WoW seems to be mirroring runescape were its efforts to open the game up slowly killed it and what drew people to it orginally is still what the market is after.

This is all based on incomplete information though.

Vanilla, despite its runaway success, was also losing a ton of people... we just don’t generally see it that way because the number of new players coming in overshadowed the ones that were canceling and moving on. All those charts we saw we’re about net subs only, which was only half of the picture.

It’s pretty likely that the developers realized that (at some point) the potential market for new players was going to reach saturation and start declining... and when that happened, retention would be critical for the survival of the game. That’s only logical. I imagine that the Cata quest zone revamp was aimed purely at retention (based on things they mentioned about losing most players at low levels).

Marketing gets people in the door, but actual gameplay drives retention. Did it work? Probably, yes.

Even in the steady decline since Cata started, they probably have much better retention than those golden years. It just seems like a total loser because very few people are jumping at the thought of subbing for the first time to a game with 15 years of history, so the net result looks bad (which is again, only half the picture).

The existence of LFR would kind of suggest that (overall) it works. After all of the disdain that it has gotten over the years, it still brings people to it. This is Blizzard we are talking about here (their greed is a thing of legend). If they thought for one minute that LFR was costing them money, it would be long gone.

[Hittion]

This is all based on incomplete information though.

Vanilla, despite its runaway success, was also losing a ton of people... we just don’t generally see it that way because the number of new players coming in overshadowed the ones that were canceling and moving on. All those charts we saw we’re about net subs only, which was only half of the picture.

It’s pretty likely that the developers realized that (at some point) the potential market for new players was going to reach saturation and start declining... and when that happened, retention would be critical for the survival of the game. That’s only logical. I imagine that the Cata quest zone revamp was aimed purely at retention (based on things they mentioned about losing most players at low levels).

Marketing gets people in the door, but actual gameplay drives retention. Did it work? Probably, yes.

Even in the steady decline since Cata started, they probably have much better retention than those golden years. It just seems like a total loser because very few people are jumping at the thought of subbing for the first time to a game with 15 years of history, so the net result looks bad (which is again, only half the picture).

Well the retention better hurry up and get rid of the queues... what marketing there wasn't any ads for classic?

I really think this was a case of a company that has zero idea what its customers want. Diablo immortal and heroes of the storm should be proof enough of it.

[Wingspan]

Well the retention better hurry up and get rid of the queues... what marketing there wasn't any ads for classic?

I really think this was a case of a company that has zero idea what its customers want. Diablo immortal and heroes of the storm should be proof enough of it.

Gaming magazines, internet articles, all the places that games advertised back in the day (which was rarely TV). I imagine a good bit was free word of mouth once things started picking up steam. By wrath era they had TV spots and such. A lot of their initial success was a right place, right time situation... it would be hard to deny that too.

And yeah, I will concede that they definitely dropped the ball a few times (like trying to kill flight) but in general, they made logical decisions along the way. It took what, 13 to 15 years before it even started to look POSSIBLE that they might not be number 1 in their market.

Classic is the thing right now, but it will get its sharp drop too. When it’s over, it should have good enough numbers to keep those people who despise change and give them a home too. There is basically nothing you could have done to keep them that would not have killed the larger market, so it’s good that they will have a place now.

Retail is undoubtedly taking a hit right now from some who stepped away to play Classic but most will probably return (new content will help a lot for this).