Hi,
This post is supposedly for constructive feedback on the LFR system. In no way do I intent to insult or put down other players, the game itself or Blizzard. I understand that a new expansion is on the horizon, being in the beta myself. I haven’t played through all of new content at all, but am aware of the biggest changes that are to come, taking them in consideration throughout this post.
This post isn’t meant for: “Vanilla was better.” “TBC was better.” “WotLK was better.”
Two side notes before getting into the subject itself:
₁. English isn’t my first language (I’m Dutch). Therefore it might be possible for me to make “sume speling errurs”, or grammatically for that matter.
₂. A quick overview of who I am (as a player). This might help other players to understand where I’m coming from and it might help Blizzard (assuming they might read this post) to see in what category of players I am:
- I am a 25-year-old man and in my “real life” I am a teacher. I see myself as a casual player, playing for a couple of hours a week, maxing out during the weekend. Since I’m a teacher I have quite a long summer break, which increases my hours of playing.
- This character is my main, an 85 Blood elf Hunter. I’ve played WoW since the beginning (2004), so I’ve seen all sides of the game throughout all expansions. My hunter is a BM and has been so ever since I created it. I don’t know anything about MM or SV.
- I only have one 85. (Am levelling up new characters though)
- I play on a RPPVP server.
- I see myself as an all-rounder, being both in PvE as in PvP (although PvE is a bit more)
I invite everyone who gives a response to this post, to also give a brief view of who you are as a player. Not to brag about your achievements, but to help us see what kind of player you are.
For everyone that doesn’t want to read the entire post, I will put a TL;DR version at the end.
Now then, let us get into the matter itself. The title of the post might be a bit misleading, for in fact it is a post for feedback about the entire progression of the game. I’m taking the LFR system as an example to try and make my arguments stronger. Do not get me wrong though, I’m not a conservative person and do not think that progression is at itself a bad thing. All I will try to show is that the progression also has downsides in the experience you will have ingame.
I also understand that some (or maybe) all of my concerns have already been spoken about by other players; I’m fine with taking the risk of repeating that what has been said before. Please note that this statement is entirely based on my experience and opinion of the game.
I will split up the arguments/concerns I have about the system in the following order:
1. Upsides of LFR
2. Purposes that don’t have a purpose
3. Difficulty
4. Accessibility
5. To conlude (TL;DR)
Upsides of LFR
Being a teacher, I feel like I also need to talk about the upsides of the LFR system, for there are a lot. In my view there a couple of reasons why Blizzard created the LFR system:
More people get to see the (endgame) content
Easier to find a group
An extra step between HC’s and 10/25 normal
For me as a casual player, the LFR system was a great improvement to see content I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, or at least not as easy to access as before. Before Cata, I never saw the endgame big boss myself. I never killed Illidan (during TBC) or the Lich King (during WotLK). Now I finally had the chance to face Deathwing myself and actually bring him to justice. So we could assume that the goal of “more people get to see the (endgame) content” is a legal one, which has been achieved. Blizzard has already shown us that by giving the numbers of people who killed DW compared to the others.
Purposes that don’t have a purpose
Right before the end of “the lich king”, blizzard introduced a way of powering up groups that would like to go into ICC. The buff increased over time as we came closer to the release of Cata. This buff is also active in the deathwing raid on live. When the buff arrived at first, it gave me a chance to go to ICC myself, for more randomly formed groups appeared. I didn’t make it all the way to Arthas, but I did get a good step inside ICC though.
There are two concerns that I have with the LFR system at this point. The first one being that now that I’ve killed Deathwing (as a casual), I don’t really feel the need or interest anymore to make an effort for the 10/25 man normal. I’ve been talking about this with other players as well. Why should I put a lot of time and effort in finding a group for the normal ones, now that I’ve already cleared the whole raid? Yes, It will give me better gear (with a different colour), but that’s about it. MoP is coming towards faster with the minute, so I won’t enjoy the new gear as much as I would’ve done before LFR. With LFR I don’t see a good reason why blizzard should still give us the buff on the normal, when they already gave us an extra step and way to get familiar with the new content. Clearly they needed an extra boost for us to go and do the normal ones as well.
The second concern is the community. With the development and progressing of the game, so did the community grow and develop. I felt like at the end of WotLK (at least at my realm), the community took the responsibility of creating groups with each other and helping out new 80’s to get inside ICC. Of course this might just be a way I’d like to remember the past as it was. However, we will never find out if that group process was developing the way I thought it was. LFR, in my opinion, took away the responsibility from the community and completely transferred it over to a tool. You don’t need any other players anymore to find a group or to see the content you want to see, you just click a button. Now I understand this also has upsides, but the community and grouping up, for me, was a good part of World of Warcraft. It feels like a loss to me that that responsibility was taken away from such great communities.
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Even if it does have upgrades for you, realistically, how long will you run it (assuming your guild does normal and heroic as well) before an upgrade for a particular slot drops? I mean, I'm sure there're unlucky examples, but in my case, for instance, I was done with it in 3 weeks (for my primary spec), to fill some voids on my gear. After that, I kept visiting it with my off-spec to gear that one up. Also, keep in mind that LFR in Mists of Pandaria is going to work differently: personal loot, 1 week delay in relation to the release of the normal version of the raid (at which time, if your guild is sufficiently skilled, they'll be jumping into Heroics)... It'll be a completely different situation, not just because of the timing on its release, but also because there'll be much more content available than LFR and raids, which will probably help battling the "burn out" if you still want to run it over and over for that piece of gear that just refuses to drop (we've all had one of those!). |
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I was forced to run it 12 times for my 4th set piece that never wanted to drop on 10 man Hagara. I hated every second of it. Forced by who? |
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Right, and would you have felt better if those guilds you were competing against progressed over you, just because the "RNG gods" decided to not give you those items missing to complete the 4 piece bonus? In that case you would just accept that the other guild is more skilled than you and deserving of the higher realm rank because their loot was there before yours? I keep reading all these downsides about LFR, yet I don't see many posts about the positives it brings. |
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A CM who doesn't understand peer pressure. Just a crazy thought: How about leaving that guild if you don't like that pressure, and join one that suits better your playstyle?
Have you never run heroics when you were raiding in hopes of upgrading that lingering green/blue item to something better? Once you were raid ready but having greens/blues you stopped entering Heroic dungeons? Because in that perspective, I think LFR would be positive as it gives you just another venue to try and upgrade those items while you wait for the one you truly want to drop, right?
Then you might be interested in knowing that in Mists of Pandaria, the initial raids will be divided in 5 for the LFR: 2 sections for Mogu'shan Vaults, another 2 for Heart of Fear, and a single one for Terrace of Endless Spring. That will probably help you deciding which ones you need/want to hit first once they're all available :-) There should be no incentive for heroic level players to run LFR, since LFR is not aimed at this demographic. And since LFR and Heroic will be opening at the same time, it's likely that those Heroic level players will prefer to run Heroic for the progression rather than LFR where, due to personal loot, they might get just inferior items to what they have. Remember, there's a new loot system coming to the Raid Finder in Mists of Pandaria, so the "gaming" that was done on the LFR by the hardcore guilds after the release of Dragon Soul is not going to happen.
This won't be possible with personal loot. You can't trade the items you get... (as it was explained on the blog some time ago).
You're not getting any rewards if the boss doesn't die, so, the reward isn't guaranteed. Sure, you may feel the chance of failure is much lower than in a normal raid, but still, it's a possibility and sometimes it does happen. World first guild just took all RNG out of the equation by doing LFR like 100 times first week, It won't be possible on Mists of Pandaria, as I've mentioned before.
Aren't those players supposed to do everything possible to perform at the highest level? Those players will actually even pick professions and items from those professions that net them a dps increase, even if it's incredibly marginal (saronite bombs during Wrath of the Lich King come to mind).
I'm talking about raiders here, not the "casual" crowd (as that seems to be the label used on this thread), and there're benefits from running the LFR: -More chances at loot that may increase your raid performance -> benefit for your raid team. -More raid content to do outside your weekly lock, if so you wish. -Raid content where you can actually test your off-spec or bring an alt knowing that you won't be dragging the rest of your guildmates, and even try to perfect your rotations in a real raiding environment. ... |
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Did it not occur to you I like this guild, and I'm in this guild because I enjoy doing heroic modes competitively, not because I enjoy doing LFR? I'm supposed to leave it because of LFR? Wow! So, you enjoy playing competitively, yet you won't use every possible resource available to get an edge over your competition? They might not get disregarded, but they are met with a cocky attitude on the forums by the representative. That's what's making it so hard to have a normal conversation... I don't see how the "leave your guild" remark is any different in this context than when it is said to casual players that say the debuff is useful for them because they can't progress without it, and they're replied with a "leave your guild and join a better one"... Why is that argument valid only in one direction? Yeah..kinda a low blow to just flat out say leave your guild if you don't like it. We do, and in my book I have this note that says: "Don't do something you don't enjoy". I'm just that weird. |
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I'm just typing text. It's up to the reader to put the tone and intention of my words. But one thing is for certain: I'm neither aggressive nor disrespectful on my vocabulary. If we start interpreting in which tone the words of particular posters (be it blue, green or white) are written, then there's no way the discussion is going to get anywhere, as there'll be the assumption that this particular individual is writing from *this* perspective (which in my case is certainly not true). |
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Pros: This is the kind of post that is actually useful for everyone. I mean, whatever gives insight into what you're thinking that goes beyond "X doesn't deserve this" or "I don't like this" is good. Not just for us as something that can be used as feedback, but also for that other part of the community that may not understand what doesn't sit right with you.
For normal/Heroic raiders this is most likely true. However, for MoP, casual raiders will face a different prospect. First, because Mogu'shan Vaults has a lower item level requirement than Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring, and second, because those players will need that LFR gear to jump into the next. So unless they're extremely lucky and get *everything* they need in a single reset, they'll have a reason (the same reason than raiders do once they've beaten the content) to go back and keep running it. That may be a niave point of view, but at the moment, LFR is little more than loot pinatas in which you go in, kill the boss and then loot roll with the emphasis being on the loot roll rather than the killing of the boss. And it doesnt give any incentive to become a 'better player' or progress futher with their game. There're two things to consider there: -What may be extremely simple for experienced raiders may actually be difficult to adapt to for a completely new player that gets into raiding. -Perhaps those players don't have the will to progress further and become "better raiders", and they just want to be able to experience that content without investing additional time in becoming "better". If im in a somewhat competitive guild at the moment, with players I have known for years and that I trully enjoy playing with I have 2 options: There's a third: Skip LFR and run the raid without that gear. It's not required for you to progress through it. Dragon Soul was not balanced around the assumption of players being LFR geared. You may feel set bonuses are too important to pass on, but if you're progressing slowly through normal mode, it's likely you'll complete at least the most important ones before hitting Heroic, right?
You can run LFR with your friends if you wish to. Actually, that makes for quite an enjoyable experience as it's usually a good time for jokes and a more relaxed environment than during progression nights. Not pretending that it's the perfect solution, but hey, it may help if you definitely need to visit LFR and hate the lack of communication with others :-) |
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It's not! Now if that's possible at all, or something that the developers feel it's useful for the game is an entirely different question :-) |
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It is quite funny to hear that 'lfr is not mandatory for progression'. Ye,sure, Paragon, Method, Vodka and all those banned super-duper-hardcore guys have no clue. World First guilds have proven over the years that they'll actually do anything at their disposal to get an edge over their competition. And often they can put resources that an immense majority of guilds don't have. In that regard, they don't really represent a majority of guilds. remember a lot of blue responses to "i am special snowflake, i want others no have epics", "remove lfr, i want tbc", "share lockout", etc, but i do not remember not a single blue post that replies to the two other 'anti-LFR statements'. One is "blizz forces raiders to boost casuals", and another is "blizz shared 10 and 25 due to burnout, and now makes us run content twice per week again". It is pretty obvious that since these topics are avoided, these statements are true. Blizz cannot admit it is impossible to balance LFR around wide skill diversity of casuals, so they just balance it around 10 raiders and 15 casuals. If casuals are good the run is OK, if they are bad, well, warm bodies are unimportant anyway. Since LFR is not required for your progression in Normal and Heroic raiding, no, raiders aren't being forced to boost "casuals". Furthermore, you're implying that all casual players lack the skill raiders have. When in fact, there're skilled players that are casual, those two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. Neither all casual players are "bad", neither all raiders are "skilled". |
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My guild doesnt compete for realm firsts or whatever, its semi-casual raiding guild and we think we're 'forced' to do it, because items from LFR will help greatly in our progression, as we will progress slower and gear up slower. None of us particularly enjoy doing LFR but most of us will - you can tell us all you like that we are weird like that, but players want to be of a greater benefit to their guilds and strive to improve however they can. Heroics reward valor points which, currently on the beta (and therefore may change, as it's still in development), you can use to acquire epic items that are tied to certain factions. Those are higher item level than the items granted on Mogu'shan Vaults LFR. So, hopefully that'll give you a reason to visit those places. Also, keep in mind that in Mists of Pandaria there's going to be plenty of stuff to do (and new features that you probably know about) once you get to level 90. Which will probably help as well to make progress with your character without feeling the need to hit constantly the same exact places day after day.
There's something here that I feel is important to mention. Back in Wrath of the Lich King, 25 man heroic raiding players were raiding 10 man heroic also because loot tables were different, and so certain items were still desirable as they dropped in 10 man, but not in 25 man. Cataclysm didn't bring only the 10/25 unified lockout, it also brought the same itemization to both modes. Just as an example, Lady Deathwhisper dropped  Whispering Fanged Skull in 10 heroic, which was very attractive to melee players. Under the Cataclysm raid design, they wouln't have had a reason to run 10 man heroic ICC (gear wise) as the item would've dropped in their 25-man heroic raid.
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That's exactly how the upcoming raids will open up on Mists of Pandaria. So hopefully this won't be an issue anymore for those that feel their experience is negatively impacted by the reason you stated. |
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There's nothing bad about it. The issue comes when demands are made to artificially create an environment that lets someone be identified as a "snowflake". If someone wants to be a snowflake, you'll have to go the extra mile, prove your worth, do what others don't... but not sit in a corner asking to please prevent others from getting what you did long ago. The issue with these kind of discussions is that at some point, they end up being driven by hyperbole and harassment. If all your arguments (in either direction) revolve around discrediting others through personal attacks rather than their arguments, then it's probably time to lock the thread. |
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Mists of Pandaria comes with plenty of level 90 content. All the daily quests available throughout Pandaria (remember, there's no daily cap in Mists), Pet battles, Challenge Dungeons (which can't be accessed through the Dungeon Finder and require groups to be manually formed), and the two new world bosses in Valley of the Four Winds and Kun-Lai Summit will hopefully provide plenty of reason to go outside the faction cities. |
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I know the only thing you can do on this regard is "wait and see". I'm not saying "MoP will fix it and there'll be rainbows and unicorns", but I do believe that if you take into account all the features and new raiding content coming up at level 90, things will look very different to most players compared to these days. |
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Hello my fellow non-murloc creatures of Azeroth,
Please allow me to chip in with a few updated bits of information about LFR, I hope that you view this as an improvement and a step in the right direction over the current version of LFR. We do hear you and your feedback is seriously taken into consideration each time we decide to apply any change to the game. We know that competitive players seem to dislike the idea of having to go through LFR to get some upgrades and that some will always go there as long as there is any chance at all of getting the slightest competitive advantage from it. Of course we would prefer that LFR wasn’t part of the progression path for guilds that are raiding normal/heroic content, and so we have made some additional adjustments for the next iteration of LFR, for example: - Currently we have two separate item levels in LFR, items from the last 2 encounters have a level of 390, while the rest have 384, this made the LFR gear from Deathwing a bit too attractive for just about everyone, including hardcore raiders, so we’ve decided that this needed to be changed for MoP. Our initial intention was that this difference would work as a special reward for beating such difficult encounters but that didn’t really translate in LFR since those encounters don’t have a difficulty that is relevant enough for this reward to be warranted. Basically our intention for MoP is that if we decide to give a slight bump and increase the loot table ilvl of end bosses, that same bump won’t be applied to LFR but only to normal/heroic modes. - While the LFR gear from a new tier will continue to be slightly better than the normal difficulty items from the previous tier, we’ll structure the power level of future tiers’ LFR loot so that it doesn’t replace Heroic gear from the previous raid, and we’re continuing to discuss other solutions internally to limit the pressure for competitive raiders to run LFR. - We’ve also made a slight change on how Terrace of Endless Spring and Heart of Fear are going to roll out. These two raids will still be split into three separate queues for LFR, but we no longer plan to release them all on the same day, instead, we’ll unlock one queue each week. We hope that by the time all of the bosses are available in LFR, organized raiders will have had two full weeks to work on normal difficulty and one week for Heroic difficulty. While I don’t expect this to completely stop raiding guilds from feeling some need to go into LFR, I hope that it will provide less incentive, they shouldn’t feel obligated to continue running LFR for a long time on top of their normal/heroic progression, I’d say if LFR remains somewhat interesting for 2-3 weeks to some players that want one or two specific items from there, that’s not such a big issue. |
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The gear is not going to be "nerfed to the ground". When new tiers are released those items won't be better than the Heroic gear of the previous tier, but they'll still be an upgrade to you if you're only raiding on the LFR and the ocassional Normal run. So, for those players that can't take part on organized raiding/prefer the Raid Finder, there'll be a gear progression just as it happens with normal/Heroic raiders.
If any of you have access to the beta, you might want to go and check how LFR works when players are learning the mechanics of the bosses. I'm sure it's not too far from the experiences that many probably had on the early days of Dragon Soul's Raid Finder release! |
