Why exactly are people so anti-LFR?

[Twdft]

I have never heard anyone demanding to get rid of lower difficulties in Doom.



I don't get how lfr would "devalue" higher difficulties, if you don't like it just don't go there. Anyone who is content with lfr isn't a raider who would help you in heroic let alone mythic anyway.

[Kushana]

People are anti-LFR because they value the benefits of LFR lower than the costs. For most of the posts above, this is because they value the personal benefits lower than the personal costs. And this is because they do not enjoy LFR (and therefore the personal benefits are zero or close to it) and because they perceive non-zero personal costs to LFR, such as reduced prestige, community, or group skill.

[Sansnom]

I didn’t call for it to be removed actually go reread it. I said it ruined the social structure of wow, and it ruined the raid scene by making it one size fits all content (pick your difficulty and see the fight. Get the same gear basically)

Social structure of WoW. How and why this is important to the game.

Sadly tho it’s one of those genies that once out of the bottle can’t be put back in. Far too many entitled players who whine about wanting to see the raids without any social element to it, some even want solo, and feel entitled to the same gear because of the sub

As oppose to the other entitle players who whine about people who can now raids without having to meet their specific criteria to do so.

There’s nothing wrong with mmorpgs being worlds of haves and have nots.

That depends on the balance of the have and have nots. You have raids. You have contents you can enjoy. You are happy. The non raiders do no yet still pay the same subs. Raiders have in the past gotten the best out of their fee due to Blizzard focus on raids as the primary end game content.

Blizzard should either balance their contents based on their player participation. If 1% of the player raids, then only 1% of their development budget should be on raids. Or they make raids a pay for content. You want to raid, pay a small fee for the content. Like 2$.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

Don't be disingenuous. There is a lot more to clearing a heroic raid with a pug in 90 minutes and you know it. The people for whom LFR is designed wouldn't get into said pugs without committed considerable time and effort to the game over a period of many months, possibly years. The only pugs they're getting into are the ones where the group spends 90 minutes wiping on the first boss....

And whose fault is it? the lfr player presses the same 4 buttons as me
and dont tell me now that wow need any skill or reflexes like a MMOBA or FPS its just pressing 4 buttons and "dont stand in fire"
ppl are just lazy thats all

[NickCageFanatic]

LFR did a few things right for the game.

For starters, it made raiding accessible to those who cannot commit to a guild's raiding schedule. Second, it made it such that no content is left unseen.

So where people find their disgust towards a lot of these accessible features is that they are often designed in the form of mindless work rather than meaningful work.

Take for example, raiding. Long ago, you needed to find or assemble a raid team. This raid team needed to be a group players that had enough talent to clear the content they would be facing. If you were unable to find such a team or assemble one yourself, you simply didn't raid.

Nowadays you don't need to associate yourself with anyone to raid. Just log in, and hit the queue button. A group will be assembled for you, and once you get into the raid you will face a vastly watered down difficulty of each and every boss encounter to the point where running the raid is more of a chore than it is representative of any sort of accomplishment, not just for you but for the group you run with.

The difference between a game like WoW and a game like DOOM is that DOOM is a single player experience, while WoW is a massively multiplayer experience. And as such, the behavior of enough individual players will effect everyone else.

Ion himself admits this when discussing dialing back WoW's api for Classic when the discussion of highly valued addons talking to other addons came up. At some point, the community will change based on its environment. That's why it is so important to make sure the community has the right environment to grow in.

[KaPe]

ZG and AQ20 were catch-up raids. I don't think anyone would have an issue if instead of LFR they added a new "introductory" raid.

That's a wildly optimistic statement and plenty of people would have an issue. Creating a raid take time and a lot of it. You are not going to get double the amount of bosses in the same patch, so either raids would have to be smaller or pauses between content would have to be longer. Hardly a beneficial situation.

Plus, if this new raid is supposed to replace LFR, it has to be trivial to achieve that - to the point where "normal" mode is pretty much LFR difficulty. If it isn't, you alienate a large part of playerbase that would previously raid without any issues. They don't care that there's three different difficulties, when they only did LFR - you have just decided that this content is off limits to them.

Does anyone else profit from that? Not really. If anything, difficulty balance becomes a mess, assuming that Mythic is as hard as usual, while Normal is made easier to replace LFR. We don't really get more bosses, since LFR takes a tiny fraction of development time - after all, carving out some abilities and nerfing the numbers is pretty trivial.

The discussion would never be "would you like to have a new raid instead of LFR". At best, it *might* have been one extra boss across the entire expansion. It better be some amazingly designed fight ever if it's supposed to justify kicking large part of playerbase out of the raid.

[barrsftw]

That's a wildly optimistic statement and plenty of people would have an issue. Creating a raid take time and a lot of it. You are not going to get double the amount of bosses in the same patch, so either raids would have to be smaller or pauses between content would have to be longer. Hardly a beneficial situation.

Plus, if this new raid is supposed to replace LFR, it has to be trivial to achieve that - to the point where "normal" mode is pretty much LFR difficulty. If it isn't, you alienate a large part of playerbase that would previously raid without any issues. They don't care that there's three different difficulties, when they only did LFR - you have just decided that this content is off limits to them.

Does anyone else profit from that? Not really. If anything, difficulty balance becomes a mess, assuming that Mythic is as hard as usual, while Normal is made easier to replace LFR. We don't really get more bosses, since LFR takes a tiny fraction of development time - after all, carving out some abilities and nerfing the numbers is pretty trivial.

The discussion would never be "would you like to have a new raid instead of LFR". At best, it *might* have been one extra boss across the entire expansion. It better be some amazingly designed fight ever if it's supposed to justify kicking large part of playerbase out of the raid.

I agree that Blizzard doesn't really have a choice at this point. They can't remove LFR without massive ramifications. That doesn't mean it was a good decision however. It's similar to Flying. Obviously they can't remove it at this point, but it probably would have been better if neither were ever added. What we have now is probably the best we can hope for without going back in time with hindsight. At least now we "kind of" can with Classic.

[Otimus]

ZG and AQ20 were catch-up raids. I don't think anyone would have an issue if instead of LFR they added a new "introductory" raid.

- - - Updated - - -




Because a lot of people don't want to do the same thing over again with increased numbers. Just like storymode in any other game. Once I beat the game on Normal or Hard, I don't really want to do it again on Extreme or Insane. Sure it'll be challenging.. but I kinda already did that.

I think it's easier to understand if we exaggerate it. Lets say instead of LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic there were 10 difficulties -- LFR being the easiest. After you do LFR, do you really wanna do LFR +1, LFR +2, LFR +3 all the way up to Heroic? Of course not.

When the game had introductory and catch up raids, hardly anyone did them. Which goes back to the core problem: pigeon holing everyone into an activity they probably don't even want to do in a desperate attempt to find a way to keep subs by any means necessary while also keeping raiding as the main focus. (If they had just come up with alternatives, none of this would have ever been a problem. But they've historically been either unable or unwilling to do that, and any attempts that have gone toward it have all been done with raiding in mind anyways... which goes back yet again to what I've said several times. WoW just fucking needs to be consistent.)

I want to know again, would people be okay with raiding being downplayed, since it was so unpopular? Or do they also think that it's okay that it's the focus, and that millions of people should just have kept quitting the game if they couldn't have come to terms with that? LFR is just the result of a bigger symptom and barely anyone wants to acknowledge it.

[teverin]

I never understood why people hate lfr. All you have to do is NOT do it if you don't like it. Let the people that do like, do it.

It's that simple.

[damonskye]

Many of the responses here prove they just don’t get what LFR is for.

Do you do heroic and mythic raids? Care about gear progression? Want to be the best at your class? Well, you’re in for a problem... LFR IS NOT FOR YOU.

Period.

LFR isn’t stopping people from raiding. It’s not preventing your guilds getting better. It’s not affecting your play.

LFR is for people who don’t care about raiding. Or rather, they’d like to see what the raid is about. But they have no interest in doing harder content.

This is the problem that so many people here just can’t get their heads around. This has nothing to do with most of you. It’s something that many players cannot fathom: that the game isn’t the most important thing in some people’s lives. Many of us treat this as a fun hobby. Many of us just want to hang out and quest and level and transmog and pet battle and, yes, the odd LFR. And that’s fine. We pay for our subs. We can do what we want.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The only ones who need to understand it’s purpose are Blizzard, and they do. LFR is never going away, no matter how many people post here.

[Black Goat]

Because it's a participation trophy.

/inb4 "I don't have time to raid" or "I'm an adult now" or "I can't dedicate that time to the game" etc, etc...

I've had normal PUG raids take less time than the shit-show that people call LFR.

[TheRevenantHero]

with the new LFG tool, LFR and LFD need to go. Timewalking can stay and thats it

Except that's an absolutely terrible idea because the majority of the player base in LFG are looking for easy runs so they expect ridiculous item levels. In current WoW if LFG was the only option, the vast majority of the player base would never get to see content.

[damonskye]

Because it's a participation trophy.

/inb4 "I don't have time to raid" or "I'm an adult now" or "I can't dedicate that time to the game" etc, etc...

I've had normal PUG raids take less time than the shit-show that people call LFR.

It's not a participation trophy. It's just participation. It doesn't affect you if people want to play how they want to play.

[TheRevenantHero]

Because it's a participation trophy.

/inb4 "I don't have time to raid" or "I'm an adult now" or "I can't dedicate that time to the game" etc, etc...

I've had normal PUG raids take less time than the shit-show that people call LFR.

And I've been in PUGs where it took well over and hour just to get to the second boss. Why does other people experiencing the content at a lower difficulty affect you so much? Why do you gotta gatekeep?

[Black Goat]

And I've been in PUGs where it took well over and hour just to get to the second boss. Why does other people experiencing the content at a lower difficulty affect you so much? Why do you gotta gatekeep?

I never said it affected me. To observe does not mean to be affected. Why do you have to assume?

It affects the game overall.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not a participation trophy. It's just participation. It doesn't affect you if people want to play how they want to play.

Yeah... ugh, people get loot, don't they? Trophies for... participating!

Exactly, it doesn't affect me. It affects the game overall. Some positive effects, some negative. Mostly negative, in my opinion.

[damonskye]

I never said it affected me. To observe does not mean to be affected. Why do you have to assume?

It affects the game overall.

You're right, LFR does affect the game overall... it keeps a lot of people playing the game. Without LFR and other casual fun things in the game, so many of us paying customers wouldn't be around anymore.

And THAT would kill it. Not LFR.

[TheRevenantHero]

I never said it affected me. To observe does not mean to be affected. Why do you have to assume?

It affects the game overall.

It's been around since Cataclysm. It's introduced a lot of people to raiding and have caused guilds to form their own raid teams for more serious content as a result. So you're right. It does affect the game. It's made the raid scene flourish!

[damonskye]

Mythic raiding is Major League Baseball. Heroic is triple-A (minor league) baseball. Normal is college baseball, or high school, or whatever.

LFR is people picking up a game in a park on a sunny day. Just having fun.

Does people picking up a game in a park on a sunny day prevent ANY of the other types of baseball? Of course not. It makes some people very interested in them. Other people, it just means a fun day playing baseball in a park. They're not looking for a "participation trophy" (that was the stupidest thing I've ever heard), it just means they're participating in something they enjoy. No down side, no "I'm making baseball terrible for everyone who plays professionally," no anything but fun.

Seriously, guys, all you LFR griefers really need to find something else in the game to complain about. Really. You'll live longer.

[bloodykiller86]

Except that's an absolutely terrible idea because the majority of the player base in LFG are looking for easy runs so they expect ridiculous item levels. In current WoW if LFG was the only option, the vast majority of the player base would never get to see content.

thats not exactly true and people can make their own groups as well. i ran a bunch of stuff with crap IO score and no issues.

[tyrlaan]

From a progression standpoint, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to step foot into LFR - you can get as good or better gear just by doing dailies. The only reason anybody does LFR is likely because it's a way for them to see content they otherwise wouldn't see likely because they're too busy to be in an active raiding guild or don't care to invest that much time into the game. So what exactly is the problem with allowing "casuals" to see this content when they're not even being rewarded for it? Why is LFR such a major talking point for classic fanboys and the like? How does it affect your gameplay at all? I personally don't use LFR and forget it exists most of the time so I struggle to understand why so many people have such an issue with it when the only thing people get from it is trash gear (hardly the "free epixx" people frame it as).

Why are people anti-LFR? Because they believe you need to play the game a certain way (read: the way they do) and LFR is not part of that way.

There are no justifiable reasons to give two shits about LFR, but just like people can't stop hating on people that enjoy classic or people that enjoy retail, folks think their definition of fun is the only correct definition.