143378-add-a-proper-lfr-and-lfg-tool-page-2

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Vastly different things as well. One is used to easily identify healers, dps and tanks for a pugged raid. Another is used for queueing up with other strangers whom together make up a 25 man raid and is placed into a faceroll version of said raid. I think, like many other "bad ideas", that it's all down to execution. People say 40 man is dead and a bad idea because it failed miserably in Wildstar, but I wouldn't count it out because Carbine completely missed their mark on so many levels with their 40 man. I could write many paragraphs of "How Carbine completely botched their 40 man raid". I'm not a fan of 40 man, but I don't think it's innately a bad idea either. The LFR we've seen from WoW is not something that impresses me in the slightest. I even suspect Blizzard is starting to regret their implementation, considering the constant nerfs to LFR since it's inception. No trinket, no tier, no good looking Xmog, having to stagger raid release etc. If the raid team wants to implement something akin to the LFR, I actually hope they'll do it with the community, and not do a surprise release of it. It's just something that's insanely important to hit the mark with. We'll see. I think when some people look at certain features, they instantly think of how it's been done throughout the history of MMORPGs, but I personally think that we should look at how well it was implemented and if it could've been done better.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Razhork


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Dungeon finder came in in Wrath LFR came in end of Cata but hit its stride in MoP.


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Nope that says cross realm DUNGEON FINDER which is not the same thing as LFR.


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I did not actually use the raid finder in Cata as I was still normla/heroic raiding. As I remember it though it came in at the very end of Cata with Dragosoul and that dungeon was a bit overtuned for it. By MoP they had it figured out. Now in WoD all but the last raid is severely undertuned. The last raid however is kicking the tails of LFR people because you cannot completely ignore all mechanics and they have got used to doing that. Also the loot has progressively become worse and worse as time go on. TO the point where in WoD many who would be using LFR are looking at it and saying it is not worth it and just quitting the game. I think Bliz intended that people would have incentive to move up in difficulty and they players just are not doing it. They are leaving the game instead. The problem with LFR much though I do use in WoW is that it is sort of a pandoras box. Once you have it you have to keep it worth doing for those who wish to use it or people will just walk away from the game. If you try to remove it once it is instituted even more will walk away. For that reason I am not all that keen on it being put into wildstar. I would much rather see either more dungeons/expeditions/adventures or a few easier/shorter raids. WoD has been the perfect storm for WoW subscription loss on so many levels it is mind boggling that Blizzards could botch it as badly as they did.


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Well, I did not play seriously in MoP (Mists of Pandaria) and did not participate in the raiding scene there. I came much later just to sample the expansion. I have seen what they have done to it in the current expansion. In fact, I first heard of LFR from my youngest son, a very big WoW fan. This was during the MoP days and he called me at one point and mentioned he was in the queue for a raid. Since I'd done quite a lot of raiding in the past I was curious and asked him about this. So he described that it was basically putting together a raid, and then they'd go work on one of the wings of the raid. I was a little incredulous as this did not equate with raiding in my mind. How would they communicate with each other during critical moments? How are they going to coordinate loot? These fights are supposed to be difficult! However, he was happy and it was no skin off my nose so I didn't really investigate further. In WoD (the current expansion) I jumped back in to play with my son. So we leveled up through Draenor (mostly pleasant and some areas quite good) and started working into the heroic instances and I got a taste of LFR. In general, through their random queuing, they have taken every social aspect out of the game and really pretty much reduced it to a theme park. You stand in line, you get in, ride the ride, and get off again. Gear score, once a quirky and poorly used measure of accomplishment that I observed in Wrath has been enshrined as a THING. Not terrible on its own and I suppose the endorsement and assimilation of the concept by Blizzard has taken away some (not all) of the stigma associated with a score of various levels, however it has taken the place of any notion of 'well-played'. If your gear score is this high, you can get on the ride and assumed to be somewhat competent. However, this isn't necessarily true. So they've taken fights in their raids and removed pretty much any interesting tactical mechanic of the fight. Because they know gear score does not equate to ability, and they know that they have people with no actual way to coordinate and cooperate, so they've removed any requirement to do so. The fights are tapioca bland. Now, hey, each to their own, right? Some people would kill for a good tapioca! Maybe? Still, it's not a raid. It just isn't. Call it something brand new. "Looking for Space Mountain" or something and it'd be more accurate. Also the gear in it actually fills in gaps between heroic dungeons and the "normal" mode of the raid. And it's used for pursuing the legendary equipment du jour, so there's a strong feeling of necessity about it. I played around a bit with the raids at endgame this expansion and between LFR (snooze), Normal, Heroic, and Mythic, I think they're falling back into a trap they got themselves out of back in Wrath of the Lich King. At the time of Trial of the Crusader, they actually had 4 raid styles to choose between. You can't do this anymore and I half expect Mr. Thelonius to come along and call me out but I remember it distinctly and remember why they changed it. They had ToC 10, Heroic ToC 10, ToC 25 and Heroic ToC 25. Not only was in my mind ToC one of the worst raids they'd put together (we used to joke that it felt like what a summer intern slapped together) but you ended up doing the raid 4 times in a week. Week after week after week. When they introduced Icecrown I think they had discovered that people were burning out hardcore on that, and that's when they introduced the "Heroic Toggle"  So at worst, you did a 10 man raid and a 25 man raid per week, and you could toggle heroic on per fight. That was indeed more manageable. I see the same thing going on in today's raiding in WoW. The proliferation of modes just makes it wearisome. I give them credit for their flexible size raid as that does cater to small to midsized guilds and such, but you still end up with the 4 variations, and the final variation requires 25 bodies. In contrast, I think of Wildstar's raiding as closer to the BC/Wrath time period (and well it should as that's where many of the devs cut their teeth.)  Not because of this "hardcore" stuff, but the fight styling and intricacy really speaks to that timeframe. And it was GOOD (and IS GOOD). However you cannot LFR it. In my opinion, if you try to create fights that can be parsed down like that, you are hobbling the designer in such a way that limits the creativity of what they can do. I don't really think there's a happy medium about this, no matter how much you try.


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