You are completely missing the point.
LFR and LFG allows players to opt out of a bad guild and still see content. They can -choose- who they wish to group with to do content. They no longer have to accept behaviour of guild members as the -price you pay- to see or participate in content.
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Not even remotely true. An MMO is just a game with a bunch of other people in it.
Actually socializing is, and always has been, completely optional. Unless you have an incredibly loose definition of socializing.
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I have no beef with LFR personally. But puging in general is anti community building by its nature. It’s vagrancy, you can have a friends list and a community chat pane but you still arn’t raiding with the same people every raid for multiple tiers. Doing that builds community.
Actually, for roleplayers, the advent of LFR was great for our communities. We didn’t have to join PvE guilds to see content anymore, we could group up based on characters and friendships instead of having to choose between raiding and RP.
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Firstly there is always player churn. People get sick of a thing and stop doing it after awhile. Even things they loved.
Secondly hugely cooperative gameplay is tops on Twitch and every other gaming venue. The fact developers have been moving away from single player games should tell us something. Monetarily the single player game must be off the charts excellent to justify its budget. Most don’t and lose money or miss projections.
Player churn is no longer functional in WoW because WoW abandoned its core principles as an MMO and left so much in legacy mode that new players wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. Nobody wants to cut through 120 levels. Not even new players. Much of that time is spent playing alone. So alone and so bored. It’s a wonder any of the new players make it a month.
The way back is to stop appealing to the casual older crowd and start appealing to 16 year olds again. People who have the time to build social communities and work on challenging content together. If you can’t be bothered to work with other people then MMORPG isn’t your thing. Maybe it was at one point but it isn’t anymore.
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True but removing LFR just means those casual individuals who were only doing raids that way would stop entirely doing any sort of raiding to begin with more then likely. I think one way which would be better would be to make mythic flex. Setting it at 20 killed off a large portion of guilds, reverting it would allow for tight knit groups to build up again.
Especially this one. There’s no reason why a leatherworker shouldn’t be able to sell their mythic-level legs that they raided for weeks to craft.
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Things like LFG and expanding the player pool do not help in building a community because it enables people to anonymously play together. You queue up, you spend a little bit of time with a stranger, you go along your way. You may never run across that player again. Or if you do, you likely won’t recognize them.
Because of this, many people are more willing to not give a crap about other players. There’s no consequence to keeping that piece of loot you don’t really need, instead of handing it to someone who does. “Need” being a relative term; this is a game, after all.
There’s no real consequence to talking trash to others. Or not being a team player in general, especially with harder content. Vote kick or leave after one bad pull is common.
None of these things help build a good community, and they are made possible by having LFG tool and vastly expanding the player pool with connected realms.
I’m not saying these things wouldn’t exist without them. Some people will always troll. Some people will always care more about themselves than others, even if it’s something like 5g vendor for that item they don’t need vs. handing it to someone who would get like a 25 ilvl bump out of it. And it is their right to do that. But that doesn’t mean it is good to do it. It doesn’t help in building a community where players look out for each other.
If Blizzard wants to make the community better, then they need to focus on things that will actually help build the community. There are a ton of things they could do to encourage players to help each other out. Things that encourage people to help others out on an individual level. Not just “group effort” things like raids, dungeons, world bosses, or warfronts (even the part where people have to collectively donate resources).
Focus more on things like…
- Giving people incentive to pass gear to someone else who needs it. Allow them to automatically get DE/Scrapper mats from it or the vendor gold price from it when they trade it (and make it soulbound and not able to be DE’d/Scrapped/Sold by the recipient, to prevent exploits).
- A “mentorship” program. Maybe you signup and get some title or whatever. And you can help people quest or answer questions for them etc. Maybe questing with them gives them an xp boost while you are in their party tapping stuff with them. And the mentor can gain things from it like ability to faster / instant travel to certain places. Or some kind of rep bonus that offers vendor discounts. Or tokens to earn to eventually get mounts or toys or something.
- Bring back and double down on guild perks. It was a great idea on paper that was great and helped build guilds up in some ways, but poorly executed in a lot of other ways. There is a ton of potential there is done right.
- Add features to the game where players (either on a guild level or a personal level) can leave a lasting mark in the game. Things such as guild halls and player housing, not instanced.
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As long as Blizzard puts major story points in raids, LFR can’t be removed. I don’t buy books just so other readers can keep me from reading the last chapter. The idea that end-game story access can be controlled by other users is laughable.
As for solutions that are actually practical, leveling time has to be shortened. That may mean everyone gets the option to go to expansion level at purchase if they so choose. Waiting for someone to level to max wasn’t a big deal 10 years ago but these days it’s a chore, and given how boring it is, it’s not a chore I see a lot of enthusiasm over, whether they’re new players or not.
If they truly want to address the feel of old server communities, they’re going to have to merge/shut down about half the servers and then dump CRZ and cross-server raiding. Then you get into issues with duplicate player names.
Or we might just want to admit that those times are gone and not coming back.
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Frankly, The only people stopping you from raiding normal is you.
Normal isn’t even hard, and will typically be more friendly of an environment than LFR.
So stop blaming others for your lack of people skills, please.
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I already raid with both normal and heroic groups and have done harder content than that, when I wasn’t in my 40s with kids and a good career.
My point stands. If I was an LFR player and you told me to get gud or not see the story play out, I’d just point to the LFG button and say “scoreboard.” It’s up to you to get that button turned off, and you’re not up to it. So cut the attitude.
The population of this game is aging. One of the companies I work with today is a software development company; their research shows the average age of what they call a “gamer” is 34. If that’s even close to accurate, gaming is going to undergo some massive changes over the coming years/decades as the activity gets carried up by those of us who started gaming as teens.
We’re progging Mekkatorque and almost have it down. Pretty sure I’m above you on the pecking order.
You can use your age as an excuse all you want, it’s irrelevant. There’s 80-year-olds who do fine.
You are deluded. You’re not going to magically stop being bad when the good players get older.
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People use age, work, family, kids, etc as an excuse to why they need LFR. These people are just lazy and apathetic and probably make up excuses in other parts of their life as well. It’s not hard to set aside 2 hours a week to clear Normal to see the story. People don’t need LFR, but these people will always choose the path of least resistance.
If the devs truly want community back in the game they do need to remove cross realm, LFD and LFR. Since they will never do that, I’m just gonna assume they are blowing smoke and said that to sound good.
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I just think it’s funny how you can spell out to them how much of a joke normal is and they get all scared and defensive at the suggestion of branching out of LFR. Look at that incoherent mess above.
God forbid you’re given an easier alternative to LFR that rewards better gear, right?
I totally agree with this. Leveling used to be a group experience, you gathered four friends and made a team, running dungeons and even questing. This builds community. Not clicking a button and getting four strangers you are likely never to see again, and heaven help you if you are a bit slow to catch up to the tank who is leaping forward at breakneck speed and gathering everything in sight! Then getting angry if someone has a slow computer and/or internet connection and is not even fully able to move yet.
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Then get rid of CRZs… Thats how its done. Force name changes and merge servers. PERIOD!!!
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Not necessarily. Plenty of people did incredibly well solo, especially mages, locks and hunters.
Though it was more viable than it is today.
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I don’t believe Ion when he says that.
Most of the systems put in place and a lot of our accessibility tools promote solo play and discourage making friends or actively forming groups.
The reason Classic had such a successful community is because the world is a living breathing place, one you don’t just press a button and instantly be grouped with 4 people you don’t know and probably will never see again.
Accessibility has killed a lot of the social aspect of the game. And it seems a majority of current WoWs community is fine with that.
Those of us who want that social element brought back will just have to play Classic when it comes out. As they will never remove the accessibility tools that have strangled social encouragement.
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Given the current state of the game I don’t think it is too out of the realm of possibility for Classic to actually be more popular. I mean BfA is crap.
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It’s a game with a bunch of people in it. And what are those people there for?
To make it feel like a world, a collective.
If you don’t want to ever deal with people you have the option of playing a solo-player game.
You have the option of finding a good guild and seeing content. If you have a guild with negative people, that is your option.
But to suggest that systems like LFR didn’t hurt socializing when you’re literally making an argument that LFR / LFG help you to experience content without dealing with a large chunk of people is a huge head-scratcher.
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