There are a good number of people who hate LFR. Many wish it never came into existence in the World of Warcraft. Some people also claimed that LFG destroyed server communities. However, I think many of the issues with LFR, and before that LFG, were the result of poor experiences in LFR and to a degree LFG, not the actual content presented in either systems. My blog post will discuss LFR, it’s merits, the current problems and possibly examine ways of handling some of the critical issues.
A friend of mine once described raiding as the primary bread and butter for World of Warcraft in relation to Blizzard’s big bet for making money. The leveling process is really a small segment compared to the end game aspects. PVP, while crucial to the player base, isn’t as emphasized as the PVE aspects when it comes to dedicated content development.
With that in mind, you could say that Blizzard wants people to experience the content they develop. When Wrath of the Lich King came out, raiding grew more casual friendly since the game was growing. ICC was one of the more accessible raids and quite possibly the height of World of Warcraft’s player base. Despite the accessibility of the content, a growing division was increasing in the World of Warcraft since so-called hardcore raiders/veterans felt that their space was being invaded. Heroics towards the end weren’t challenging compared to the ones in Burning Crusade, except for the three ICC instances. After that a demand for challenging content came about. The net result was Cataclysm.
Eager to see the next level of content, many players, especially those without guilds who used tools like LFG and pugs for experiencing end game PVE content, were in for a major shock as the new instances created new trends in the game. No longer could you just AoE your way to the end bosses and treat them as simple target dummies. Mechanics from BC were re-introduced where you were forced to crowd control targets, avoid stuff on the ground, improve raid awareness and not just Leeroy Jenkins pull your way to the end of the instance. Healers, especially, found a new challenging model where they were forced to pay more attention to their mana and focus on using key heals on everyone, not just tanks.
People expecting to zerg the end game content were shocked and discovered that they could no longer progress. Many players quit during this time. While part of the reason stated was due to “China having a different release cycle,” the truth is that the lack of accessibility in content along with the new walls that were installed and the division between casuals and hardcores had created a rift in the community and the game. The numbers fell and it wasn’t until patch 4.3 where Blizzard realized that they needed something to re-engage players back into the game.
Although the heroics eventually were nerfed, the real focus in the game was to make the content reasonably challenging, not time consuming (since a few instances could require over an hour to complete) and appeal to as many different types of players as possible. That system was LFR (Looking for Raid). Certainly, the new End Time heroics introduced were balanced around being doable and having certain required mechanics to fulfill properly. But it was LFR that was the big hook in trying to recapture many players who quit, especially considering that it was the opportunity to down the big end boss for Cataclysm.
The results were pretty good imo. LFR for the most part was doable and provided decent gear and valor. Combining that along with the End Time heroics, patch 4.3 was very casual friendly. Unfortunately, it probably lasted longer than what people wanted. Towards the end much of the player base left as Diablo 3 came about, creating queues in excess of 30-60 minutes.
Even before that though, you had three problems that started to emerge in LFR: 1) ninja looting; 2) griefers; 3) loud mouths. Ninja looting was partly solved when the loot system ended up going towards a personal RNG based loot system. However, the griefers and loud mouths were something that never were really addressed.
With Mist of Pandera’s release, many people probably were happy to get away from the Death Wing encounter and into fresh content. Mogu’shan Vaults was a great improvement for LFR raiders, providing a good balance of mechanics and addressing the loot concerns (minus the RNG occasionally). The ninja pulls for these weren’t nearly as horrific but came up only now and then.
Heart of Fear though probably was a bit much initially since the Garalon encounter in particular was overtuned for most people (and still presents problems). Although Blizzard did end up addressing Garalon over time, what it didn’t seem to do was raising a red flag for Blizzard on how players handle (or rather don’t handle) certain types of mechanics. You can easily go into the Garalon encounter right now and find people purposefully, accidentally and/or consistently stepping in the purple circle, not targeting the legs, standing above the steps after the encounter starts and even loafing near where Garalon lands and causing the encounter to initiate.
Part 2 and Terrace of Endless Spring weren’t nearly as problematic except for the Amber Shaper encounter (though that one isn’t as problematic raid-wide compared to individuals who do not know the encounter). However, when Throne of Thunder came out, it proved to be up there in challenging content alongside Garalon. In particular, you had Durumu, Horridon, Dark Animus and Lei Shen as fairly challenging encounters for people who are used to stuff like Garajal from Mogu’shan Vaults. Even the trash can prove difficult for some groups as people ninja pull packs en route to Magaera for instance.
Then we arrive at Siege of Orgrimmar where people still cannot handle basic mechanics such as figuring out which adds to attack rather than tunneling bosses, unceremoniously opening all boxes during Spoils or trash pulling to grief just before Galakras. While Blizzard has attempted to mitigate the issue through nerfing everything down, the core problems with LFR in my viewpoint will persist.
One major issue that has risen over time in LFR is the afker. Along with the griefer and loud mouth, the afker does an equal amount of harm as the other two in creating a poisonous environment. The afker can really be anyone from players with no ability whatsoever to heroic raiders (yes, I’ve seen you!) Part of the problem is that there’s a stigma associated with LFR where people look at it as nothing more than a loot pinata. Loud mouths on forums who downplay the value of LFR and those in LFR spreading these ideas have in turn managed to convince many people that you only do LFR for loot. It’s not even about seeing content or anything. So the afker comes in believing that the loot far outweighs the repair costs and time incurred as a result of their lack of desire to perform.
But since you have a range of afkers, the real issue becomes: why even bother? It honestly makes zero sense to me for someone to waste anywhere between 20-30 up to an hour waiting for a queue to pop, then go afk the entire time just to get some lousy valor points and possibly a piece of loot. By afking, especially in stuff like Siege of Orgrimmar and to an extend Throne of Thunder, you certainly are not doing yourself any good. You’re actually wasting your own time by not helping to move through the instance faster.
More importantly, if all you intend to do is collect loot rather than participate, why even bother collecting loot? What’s the point of collecting loot unless you do something with it? Don’t you want to see the progress you make each time you get a piece? Don’t you want to demonstrate how well you can do and improve each time you get into an encounter? I hate the fact that they call LFR loot “welfare epics” but when it comes to AFKers, it’s certainly true in how they are handed out stuff for doing nothing. Even if the content might not feel challenging to people, the least you can do is either perform as best you can or not bother wasting your time and others’ time.
I think Blizzard has attempted to remedy this issue through encouraging the “personal responsibility” type of mechanics. Quite honestly, I’m pretty ambivalent about the manner of which Blizzard has tried to use a game mechanic to force people to improve. My feeling is that the people who lack the desire to do anything won’t improve nor try for the most part because they’re of the mental disposition that they are above the game. And it really just isn’t a game issue; it’s a personal issue that everyone who encounters these people have to deal with where some people enjoy the mire of being sub-mediocre no matter what. No challenge that you ever present to these people will ever cause them to rise up and step up their game play because they are incapable of setting goals for themselves and cannot meet them. The only thing you can hope for is that their game time expires or that their parents pull the card on them.
Going back to the issue of griefers, this is a major problem in LFR (or LFG for that matter) that Blizzard seriously needs to do as soon as possible. Rather than focus on mechanics and new content, Blizzard really needs to introduce something to handle griefers. Part of the issue often involves how bosses are pulled/triggered. Occasionally, you will have mechanics like Garalon’s Crush which can wipe a raid or bugs that can be exploited such as warlock gateways that would cause Ji-Kun to be unable to spawn. At any rate, these aspects of encounters need to be seriously examined to prevent griefers.
First, when it comes to boss encounters, I believe that for LFR there really needs to be a way to enforce how a boss is pulled. For instance, I’ve read one suggestion where you have a ready check that must be agreed upon before the boss can be triggered. Another one is having the raid leader and/or tank(s) being the only ones capable of starting the encounter. For instance, if you have to speak to someone such as the Narushen encounter or Spoils, then only the raid leader or tank would be able to handle that.
Trash griefers are another thing that Blizzard must consider. Blizzard did reduce the trash leading up to the Dark Shamans, but I felt that they did that more to conserve time for players as opposed to people who Leeroy encounters. But high numbers of trash that can get pulled before or during a boss encounter should be eliminated in LFR. Alternatively, one thing that can happen is preventing trash from being activated during encounters (making them green perhaps) and only allowing players in focusing on the boss. Or perhaps that in order for players to be able to successfully pull a boss during LFR, you have to clear out certain prerequisite trash. Any left over trash would turn green once the encounter started in case some smart ass decided to cause issues for the group.
I would suggest preventing Garalon-like Crush mechanics as well. Mechanics like that can be too easily abused by potential griefers. Some mechanics like the way a tank would need to face a boss as in Magaera or Rook aren’t bad in my opinion because those are very class and role specific.
Ultimately though, the thing that really is required more than anything is a tool to categorize griefers, afkers and trash talkers. A lot of that seemed to have been removed, which is problematic because the raid cannot easily help to identify players that create problems. While Blizzard has admitted to monitoring the activities of all players, they aren’t the ones that have to deal directly with these people in the first place. The thing is that the players in the raid will be able to better judge the actions of the people within the raid and there needs to be better tools to manage those people.
Of course, what allows griefers, afkers and trash talkers in LFR to exist is the cross realm nature of LFR. With 25 people clumped together from different realms, it’s difficult for the average person to easily identify a trouble maker from the start. It would be nice if when entering into an LFR you could see people who have been previously flagged. In that manner, people can keep an eye on those players if they intend to cause issues. On the other hand, if a player behaves, then perhaps the system will allow players to upvote them so that they’re given a chance to redeem themselves. Overall, I think it should be the community that has better control over the people that they must deal with in the game rather than relying on the trust of Blizzard to enforce better behavior upon players.
Another thing that Blizzard needs to address is the queue time. There’s numerous reasons why the queue times are out of control. Most of it is simply getting enough resources like tanks and healers to participate, with tanks being a premium once again. Some people blamed the loot specialization aspect to have triggered the lack of tanks, but truthfully that hasn’t necessarily been a horrible thing; at least, you aren’t seeing as many tanks decked out in PVP gear or being severely undergeared all the time (still happens but that’s more of a result from the Timeless Isle).
That said, dealing with the queue time has been one of the most discouraging aspects of LFR. You wait for 30-60 minutes, only to get into a half finished encounter, or are locked out because someone ninja pulled or end up wiping dozens of times only to get a big repair bill rather than useful gear. Reducing the queue time though would mitigate part of the frustration even if Blizzard doesn’t fix the griefers that cause time wasting wipes. Part of what Blizzard attempted to do was provide incentives for non-DPS roles to get them back in. But apparently those incentives still are not enough.
I think a major issue is the 25 man requirement. While it’s been theorized that the encounters are actually designed for less than 25 raiders, it might not take into account underperforming players (particularly afkers). Ever since Flex Raiding came out, one thing that Blizzard might consider is providing a Flex Raiding option for LFR that allows the encounter to scale based on the number of people in the instance. So how could that work? I feel that the Flex option should present itself during low queue times where people are waiting 2+ minutes after tanks or healers leave. The boss’ health and raid wide damage would be lowered. That won’t solve certain mechanics like tank swapping but maybe in that case the tank swap mechanic could be eliminated (for myself, I just think it’s annoying enforcing a 2 tank, 6 healer and 17 DPS policy in the first place).
Another option would be to fill in the roles after a certain threshold is met with NPCs. Now, this could be a very interesting opportunity for people with a few friends who just want to raid without the people number requirement. This is something that I really would love to see Blizzard pull off. I think the problem in raiding is just being able to gather the number of people at a certain time. Realistically, it’s just better when people can do raid encounters when they have the time. Perhaps, high level raiding would require the standard 10/25 people. But at least when it comes to LFR, providing a more advanced version of Flex Raiding would be an improvement on the social gaming environment that makes LFR currently stressful.
One other alternative is to provide a 10 man solution. The good thing about 10 man vs the Flex option is that the model is a lot simpler and pretty much exist as a scaled down version of 10 man normal. Another positive aspect to the 10 man LFR option would be higher accountability. There still would be the possibility of the griefer, but being able to identify those players will be a lot easier. Also, it might allow for better queue times as you’re not dependent on 24 other people. Maybe the 25 man would be the learning model while the 10 man would be for those who want to take LFR a little more seriously rather than being carried through the larger group.
Lastly, one idea is to provide a complete solo option for LFR. I really wish there could be an option for this. The advantages here would benefit the solo player who wants to learn the encounters. Perhaps, there could be no chance for loot or a single piece of loot that can drop (or is selected at the end of the encounter). The encounter would be filled in by NPCs and you focus on handling your role. Unfortunately, the only other option currently to learn encounters is through watching videos before you can dive directly into one with a group. The solo option though will allow those on their own schedules to only affect themselves and perform at whatever level they want to complete the encounter. Of course, the best thing is eliminating the queue time completely.
The thing is that I feel LFR has its place in the game. Sure, the bar is set low because of how it was meant for successful pugging. At the same time, you need a difficulty level where people can make it through. The game slowly has been able to provide that aspect in order to create a wider appeal. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it’s better for the game. Most games have different difficulty levels where people can challenge themselves at a pace fitting for them. The worst feeling in playing a game that you pay for is not being able to max out what you can do because of certain restrictions that might be out of your control. And it’s equally defeating for Blizzard to put out content for which a tiny portion of their player base can enjoy (especially when it’s their bread and butter).
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