We know that LFR is a divisive topic on MMOC but hear me out on this, I believe this would be good for the game.
-EDIT- Just to be 100% Clear, I use LFR and Raid, I do NOT want it removed. I want a better experience for everyone who uses the system.
Intro
LFD was and still is a great tool used to open up heroics, Mythic+, and raids to all players. Depending on the time of day, you can set up a group for almost anything and find players who want to do that content. Mythic+ has become a huge success for players who want small group content in which they control how challenging it becomes.
LFR is a mixed bag and not much of a success story. On 9/19/2011, Ghostcrawler stated :It is really there for people who want to see the content and want to feel like they’re raiding, but we don’t want it to be more attractive than traditional organized raiding.
Do you feel like you are alienating any part of the player base when you make easier content or do you think the new three difficulty system might solve that?
Ghostcrawler: We’re hoping it solves it. I mean, generally this is an experiment for us. We’re not sure how it is going to work out. We have a hugely diverse player base, and we want to be able to let lots of different players see the content. We felt in the past we were struggling too much to decide “Okay, heroic mode is for 5% of the population… that means normal mode has to be for 95% of the raiding population” and we were stretching ourselves really thin. So our hope is that by offering up an additional difficulty, it will free up normal mode to be targeted towards the kind of traditional guild it has been, where players who don’t have a lot of time to raid or find the commitment too much can do Raid Finder to be able to experience the fights.
Gamepedia.com describes LFR as:
The Raid Finder (or “Looking For Raid”, commonly abbreviated as “LFR”), accessed through the Group Finder, is a tool that helps players find and join a random or specific raid instance with others. The feature was first released in patch 4.3.0 for Dragon Soul as a permanent addition to the raiding system, and has been included in all subsequent instanced raids.
The boss fights in a Raid Finder raid are simplified: their difficulty relative to normal and flexible is scaled down with the intent that they be manageable by randomly assembled, less organized pickup groups. Reduced boss health and damage compared to higher level modes in the same group size, as well as the removal or modification of specific mechanics that normally make the raid dependent on the performance of a single player.
A Raid Finder run is a gentle introduction to the bosses, and can be educational for a player who is new to, or still learning the fight. Some important differences in boss tactics exist between Raid Finder and Normal mode, and it is especially important to remain informed of this when or if you transition to Normal mode.
Each time a Raid Finder group wipes on a given boss, the Determination buff will be applied to the players which increases their health, damage dealt, and healing received by 5%, stacking up to 10 times, and dropping when the boss is killed.
LFR is supposed to bridge the gap between the super causal players and normal raiders, with the flexibility go right the wing of the bosses they need without committing hours clearing the earlier bosses/trash. It is a great concept that should be taken further.
Problems
Off the top of my head I can name 4 bosses that destroyed LFR groups due to poor tuning. N'Zoth, the Corruptor, Kil'jaeden, Lei Shen, and Durumu the Forgotten all had group tactics that needed to be learned but heavily punished the raid if a player screws up. This is fine in an organized group where you know the players, have voice communication system in place, and can replace players who repeatably fail the mechanics. In some raids the trash "teaches" some of the boss mechanics, so the whole group understands how to approach the boss. Combine this with vent/discord/youtube/dungeon guides and you usually have a decent idea of how to boss fight works. LFR players get none of this. The trash is so heavily nerfed that they dont learn the mechanics, players drop in and out of the raid so the people you spent the last 30 minutes with can be replaced with with players who never done the boss before and refused to use the above resources to learn how to complete the encounter.
Imagine explaining N'Zoth to 24 other players, setting up groups, wiping and learning the fight and getting the boss HP lower with every attempt only to have half the group leave and replaced with players who NEVER did the boss. It is not fun to effectively start from scratch with every pull.
If the Above wasnt bad enough, add toxic players to the mix. Players who causes chaos by kicking the guy/gal who is explaining the fight, queuing as a role they have no gear for, pulling extra trash or bosses without a full group or both tanks and/or missing healers, failing boss mechanics on purpose, dying 0.0045 seconds after the pull, or just AFK/auto attacking the boss.
With both of these facts, no sane raider would want to join LFR and players who regularly use LFR would avoid the problem bosses. This defeats the whole point of LFR.
Solutions
- Proving Ground V.2
- LFR Score
- Raider Bait
- LFR Tuning
Proving Ground V.2
Remember proving grounds?
Proving Grounds should be updated every expansion and become a REQUIREMENT to complete before you can queue for LFR. Like the original system, a Gold/silver/bronze tier system should be put in place with and endless version for players who want to test themselves. It should be designed around the player having NORMAL 5 MAN dungeon gear and increased throughout the expansion life-cycle to match the gear requirements need to queue for that tiers raids.The Proving Grounds are a special type of single-player scenario that allows players to both learn and demonstrate the core skills associated with a given role or class. These might take the form of testing how long a tank can protect an NPC healer from a stream of oncoming enemies, or how much damage a rogue can deal to targets while avoiding awareness and movement checks of increasing difficulty. The system is intended to be a fun way for players to practice some of the skills that are essential for group gameplay, and for expert players to demonstrate mastery and compete for positions atop leaderboards, similar to the Challenge Mode feature.
There are three types of challenge, Damage, Tank and Healer, with each providing appropriate challenges. Each challenge can be tackled in Bronze, Silver, Gold or Endless mode, with each difficulty unlocked by defeating the previous one. Higher difficulties provide a stiffer challenge not only in terms of numbers but also in complexity, with more complicated sequences and combinations of enemies. Endless mode provides the player with a literally endless challenge, testing players to see how long they can withstand the onslaught
LFR Score
LFR should teach players the fights via pop ups / Raid warnings that say "Move to this location", "Taunt", "Raid wide damage inc, prepare to raid heal", The boss is weakened, do max damage", etc.
I would love a score based system that tracks damage/healing/tank cd used/etc and used that to determine if you can get gear/rewards. An example:
All living players would passively gain points with bonuses for avoiding/soaking some of the bosses abilities (fire on the ground, void zones, anything that can be avoided). DPS would gain points for damage done per time alive and killing adds, healers for healing and keeping the tanks above 50% HP and bonuses for bring an low HP player back to 80-ish% HP, and tanks for taunting on time, using CDs to reduce incoming damage, and reducing raid wide damage.
Your score is private and can never decease so another player cannot grief you by pulling you into fire/voidzones/etc, however if you cause players to lose HP or Die by not soaking a boss mechanic or not moving away from players when you have a bomb/negative effect, your score will pause for few seconds depending how how much damage the player(s) took.
Each boss will have their own score levels. At X score, you become eligible for gear drops (50%) with higher scores getting a higher chance for gear to drop up by another 15%. This system will carry the increased drop rate to the next LFR boss (in the same raid) so a player who is doing their part will have piece of gear drop every 3rd-4th boss. The bonuses will reset when the player is awarded a piece of gear (not counting bonus rolls).
Example 1, player with a very high score: Boss 1 - 65% chance at a loot drop, Boss 2 - 80%, Boss 3 - 95%
Example 2, player with a very high score: Boss 1 - 65% chance at a loot drop, Boss 2 - Loot, Boss 3 - 65%
Example 3, player with a score that awards a chance at gear: Boss 1 - 50% chance at a loot drop, Boss 2 - 50%, Boss 3 - 50%
Example 4, player with a low score: Boss 1 - 0% chance at a loot drop, Boss 2 - 0%, Boss 3 - 0%
Example 5, player with a score that awards a chance at gear who died on phase 2: Your score and the score levels will be calculated based on how long you were alive. If this player was auto attacking and purposely killed him/herself then he will not get gear, However if this was a single misstep made by a player who was doing his/her part then they will have a 50% chance to get loot.
This will teach the player base about the bosses mechanic and reward them for doing it correctly. Toxic players will only punish themselves.
Raider Bait
This one is simple, give top tier raiders a reason to do LFR. It can be a weekly quest that can only be seen by players who killed X number of bosses on normal or higher (this will be account wide). The reward could be extra bonus roll coins, currency for Y (Example: corruptions), Conquest/valor/etc. Players on this quest will be more likely chosen to be the raid leader. Adding higher geared players to LFR will reduce queue times, increase the success rates and give players a chance to see what a geared raider can do.
LFR Tuning
Another very simple change. Remove mechanics that can cause a player to get one shot or wipe the raid and tune the bosses abilities so LFR players have time to react to an error without killing them or someone else. Death and a wipe should not be the punishment in LFR, the lack of gear caused by your low score should be sufficient.
Conclusion
My goal is not to punish LFR player but to empower them to do better. With the above systems in place a player who queues into LFR would have some knowledge of basic boss mechanics (proving grounds), have a leader who has killed the boss on much higher difficulties (raider bait) and would push themselves to do well so they will have a high chance at loot (LFR score).
I got into raiding when I saw endgames raiders chilling in Org in BIS gear riding mounts that came from endgame achievements or bosses. It was inspiring, I am hoping that seeing such titans in your LFR group would motivate others to challenge themselves to do more difficult content and one day become that beacon of awesome for other player.
Thank you for reading though my ideas and I want to know yours and any problems you foresee with the ones I listed.
Sources :
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...(Ghostcrawler)
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Raid_Finder
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Proving_Grounds
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Thank you all for your input. I like some of the ideas being throw around. Here are some of the more common responses :
- -Didnt read anything here- I hate it and you, and you should feel bad
- No, LFR is fine as it is.
- LFR is bad and should be removed
- LFR players dont want to improve and do more difficult content
- IDC
- I like it and want a better LFR experience
- Some of these Idea were done in MOP/WOD and the results were lackluster
- Raiders in LFR would be toxic
- iF YoU dOnT LiKe iT, ThEn DoNt dO iT
- More "chores" isnt a good idea
- LFR is WOW's most popular content and messing with it would cause backlashes in other areas
- your ideas suck
- sToP tAlKiNg aBoUt lFr, tHiS iS tOpIc #4581111
- Updating/changing LFR would be too costly (development time)
- Your ideas punish players
- -fighting-