This is a rather silly assumption. But neither lfr nor story mode should be gated like that I agree.
Theyâre doing the thing Talie said he wanted, which was âyou have a solo scenario to see the end of the raidâ except instead of doing it for old expansions, theyâre just future-proofing and doing it for the new expansion.
Even though it will be years and years until we see any pay-off from this with the way theyâre choosing to do it.
I was genuinely excited for a minute there.
Canât practice mechanics that wonât be able to exist in a 1-5 player scenario that will have to be role agnostic.
Iâve never met anyone that didnât use me like some computer assigned stranger in this game. Pretty much everyone treats each other as a means to an end it seems and if you take up too much of their precious time or are inefficient they cast you aside like a leper.
Most of the players in this community Iâd never want to play any other game with.
2 Likes
Technically yes, except itâs still a raiding experience. You gotta work with the group, have a basic understanding of raid fights (eg fire = bad), and still have to wait in queue for a group.
This will let people jump in to finish the story and then move on, which a lot of people want.
I like having both as an option. Iâll continue being an LFR Hero for my story content since story mode ainât out till the final wing anyway.
People can choose to see the content in a way thatâs released later, or a way that requires them to put some effort in and progress through the raid.
Neither of those is a time-gate.
Id agree with you if doing the raid was a side story. But a lot of time there are cutscenes and events we need to see the raid for.
I donât see a problem with story mode, with zero rewards outside of quest completion, releasing along side normal/heroic/mythic. Heck id even take it after the RWF.
Making people wait 6 weeks to see the story for themselves is time gating.
Edit: I read the post you responded to and itâs about LFR. I thought it was about story mode.
People who are afraid of spiders. People afraid of groups. People who install a huge MMORPG to play single player (and âplayingâ sounds pretty generous).
Maybe one day Blizz will develop around its actual playerbase and not the ultra elite mythic .001% or the lowest common denominator of carebears.
2 Likes
They seem to be doing a good job of it right now.
And if you want all content the game has to offer to be trivially easy, classic era is that way.
1 Like
Iâm actually pretty happy that, of all the ways they could have implemented something like this, they opted for this direction.
It doesnât take away from any of the gameâs other difficulties - including LFR - and it circumvents the problem BFA had of having campaign quests tied to the Raids, where we had things like tossing Gâhuunâs literal corpse outside of Uldir in order to make the quest completable after the raid was no longer relevant.
This kind of system really is perfect for simply future-proofing the expansionâs content for later patch cycles, or simply for later expansions, so that no one feels like they hit a brick wall, and are unable to complete a quest or continue an expansionâs story because the quest is tied to final boss encounter of a raid that is no longer relevant.
Iâm also happy that this is only for the final boss of the raid, and offers no tangible rewards outside of whatever the quest offers for completion, as again this prevents this from actually affecting other raid difficulties, and doesnât give an avenue for character progression.
This is the way a Story Mode difficulty should be implemented for raids, and Iâm happy to see it happen.
1 Like
Being able to solo a world-threatening raid boss is immersion-breaking. I will stick with LFR as the story difficulty.
Storymode getting gated like lfr lololol. Why gate the cinematic that everyone watches on youtube anyways? You cant even use this mode as practice since its going to be so neutered.
From someone who only PvPâs thank you!
This is very good. I like the addition, although I feel like at this point, there are too many variations of raids. LFR, normal, heroic, mythic, story? Itâs gotten a little ridiculous
Itâs a scenario-version of the final boss of the raid, designed entirely so that people arenât locked out of campaign completion for whatever reason - including coming into the game late.
This isnât a full-featured difficulty like the other difficulties are - itâs the equivalent of a one-off scenario quest, and nothing more.
Theyâre trying to account for how many different types and skill levels of players the game has.
Given that they say that it is intended to be completed only once, it seems like the primary reason you would do it is to complete the story quest that generally says âkill the final raid bossâ and offers one-time rewards for doing so, similar to doing a quest scenario.
Exactly. Gating is behind LFR achieves literally nothing since youâll still be left waiting some 4-6 weeks to see the finale. By which time youâve already watched it on Youtube.
This is a timegate that serves no functional purpose.
5 Likes
With Story difficulty in Nerub-ar Palace, our goal is to offer players a way to see the epic conclusion of Azj-Kahetâs story who may not see the end to that story otherwise. This difficulty is intended for a private party of 1-5 players and will allow players to face off against Queen Ansurek without the assistance of other players or Followers. This encounter features reduced combat complexity and difficulty, instead focusing on the narrative elements of the encounter.
It sounds like this is saying only the Queen Ansurek encounter itself will be available on story difficulty, and the rest of the raid will only be available in higher difficulties. While I understand this would include a good deal of extra work, and may not be feasible at this point for Nerubâar Palace, Iâd urge you to consider making story difficulty for future raids include at least something close to the full raid experience. There have been some important story beats in raids aside from the final boss fight that story difficulty players could miss, such as the Anduin Wrynn fight in Sepulcher and the Smolderon fight in Amirdrassil. Ideally Iâd love to see the full raid in story mode laid out the same way as in normal difficulty and higher, as LFRâs wing format often leads to awkward situations when bosses are placed out of order that might cause confusion for players who havenât seen the raid on higher difficulties (âWhy do we need these seeds to stop Smolderon? We already beat him in the first wingâ).
Iâd also like to add my voice to those here asking you to make story difficulty available when the raid releases, rather than when the last wing of LFR opens - and ideally to do away with LFR timegating entirely. The original idea of simulating the pace of progression is fairly obsolete with how many guilds can full clear normal and even heroic week 1, and LFR timegating often causes players to end up experiencing the story out of order.
Overall though, including a way for casual players to experience raid stories without the stress and toxicity of LFR is a great addition to WoW, and Iâm glad to see this is something Blizzard is focusing on - Iâd just like to see the idea expanded and improved going forward.
5 Likes