LFR is one of the worst ways to gear. There’s nothing interesting to keep people subbed just to run a new LFR wing every week. It’s simply for a sense of progression.
That seems to make it beg more of the question as to the point of gating it, not less. If people aren’t running it for gear upgrades or story anymore what are we solving by gating it? If we pretend that player metrics are not playing a factor, then I’d say creating a sense of progression for people who don’t use it for gear or story doesn’t provide any value for any players.
It can’t even be for the bleeding edge guilds anymore. I mean…they do like 5 billion normal/heroic splits as it stands before going into Mythic. I can’t even imagine them bothering with LFR to any serious degree, if even at all.
It’s not about player retention. It’s about a sense of progression. Those are two different things.
Nowhere did I claim people aren’t running it for story. I only said it’s the worst way to gear.
People also run it to see the fights and experience them.
But they aren’t gating LFR for player retention. It’s gated for a sense of progression.
I think there’s some truth to this.
I think LFR is gated specifically to keep higher level raiders out of LFR. For gear, for currency, for whatever LFR might drop that will benefit their early runs.
I have no proof of course, it’s just a gut feeling.
Or maybe it was that burrito I had for lunch…
Yeah, except Blizzard implemented Story mode so I don’t need you to claim anything.
Which isn’t a particularly relevant reason for why people need that sense of progression. If all they want to do is experience the fight why do other players care?
If LFR is someone’s end-game because it’s their final gear route and they get story closure the same way everyone else does then I think creating progression for them provides some level of value, albeit it’s always going to be frustrating for them because they’re just waiting around. But at the end of the day it means they get to clear out the raid, and then farm it repeatedly to try to get the best gear possible for them. That’s not the case according to you.
The problem with the dismissal around player retention refers to everything I’ve already said on the subject. If we gather the seven dragon balls and confirm it’s a considerate factor there is exactly a zero percent chance that Blizzard would ever admit to it. Confidently dismissing it because Blizzard said so is laughably naive, and I’ve done my best to explain why they have motivation to retain players. LFR is only a small piece of that puzzle, but it all adds up. LFR on its own won’t retain players, but there’s plenty of design features they implement to retain players.
And FYI player retention design isn’t inherently bad either, it just is when it feels forced, and that’s what LFR is and why people squabble about it to this day. Gearing, patch cycles, etc all encourage player retention; that’s why when the boss dies it doesn’t ask you what you want.
This is just nonsense since Blizzard has stated that they add incentives to LFR (like augment runes) to get higher-end raiders into LFR to “smooth out the runs” (Blizzard’s words, not mine - and a hilarious phrase I’ve never forgotten).
Whatever keeps them hating on a company they pay to hate.
It’s to encourage people to try the raid on a non-queable difficult.
I’m not even sure what you’re trying to argue here. Again, I said the following:
So please explain to me why you’re trying to argue about story, when I never brought up story. I only brought up gearing.
I never said it was. You seem to be trying to argue things that don’t exist.
You have somehow now managed to make up stuff I never said, argue points I never made and now you’re putting words in my mouth.
This is not about player retention based around LFR. It is about a feeling of progression. Have you progressed through a raid? Do you understand it takes more than a day? They don’t want the current raid to feel like a Timewalking raid for the lower tier players.
It. Is. A. Sense. Of. Progression.
They absolutely want player retention. But LFR is not gated for player retention.
It’s like talking to a brick wall… 
Since you cannot seem to stick to the actual things that are said and wish to make stuff up that wasn’t stated, argue things that aren’t there and ignore everything else… I’m very much done with our conversation. Have a good day.
Story mode, you mean that one boss fight thats even more trivial and watered down than LFR. which rewards you no gear but an item that you have to fork over thousands of gold to craft an item that really isnt worth the effort?
all to watch a cutscene you could go watch on Youtube?
So then do content that rewards better gear, not blizzards fault youre awful at the game you been playing for near 2 decades. You would think by now you could have learned how to push buttons on keyboard 
guess brain dead LFR and story mode are what your stuck with
But how else will that one hero who knows the fights learn to yell the mechanics at people in LFR? Lol jk
Clearly you never did LFR Raszageth. Without 3-5 determination stacks it was basically impossible due to so many idiots getting flung off and dying. Beating it on the first attempt was a very rare treat.
Prob should not have the instant-death mechanic in LFR but it did, and Determination absolutely made the fight go from nearly impossible to a breeze.
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LOL I remember that.
You did not mention anything about story, but others in this thread have and it’s one of the arguments that revolve around LFR.
The main pull of LFR on inception was basically to create a “beer-mode” level of raiding where people who had too much going on in life, and just wanted to chill and slay dragons easily could so they had something to do and see the story without needing Youtube. It’s also why some people got upset when Highmaul had a hidden Mythic only phase with Cho’gall because it concluded his story and the bulk of the playerbase didn’t get to see it in-game.
My point in referencing seeing the story in LFR or not is that with story-mode raiding entering the picture is that aspect of why people run LFR is that running it for story is no longer required. If you want the story you do the story-mode raid, and then can raid LFR later for gear.
You’re listing out the reasons why someone would run LFR. Those reasons need to correlate to why a sense of progression is necessary if you want to die on the hill that a sense of progression is necessary.
I have actually. Blackrock Foundry was my peak raid. ~180 some pulls, server first, US ~36 IIRC. It was a great peak feeling to get that boss down.
And by the way, as someone who has done plenty of progression raiding I can tell you that 1 shotting every boss in an hour or two and then waiting until the next wing unlocks so you can spend 2 hours one shotting all the new bosses doesn’t create any real sense of progression.
And what is the purpose of creating a sense of progression for a portion of the playerbase that do not want it? I loved progression raiding when I was doing it, it was tons of fun. Some people aren’t wired that way. So who are we helping by creating a sense of progression for them?
Right right…for a sense of progression. Because reasons. In all this hammering on ITS FOR A SENSE OF PROGRESSION no one is discussing why that sense is necessary in this day and age. I think it did make sense…once upon a time, but I think that time is far and long gone.
Don’t tell me how to live my life.
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Ok. Then you’re gonna have to explain very convincingly why it is not necessary anymore when raiding has been locked in and unchanging since the end of MoP. ‘Beer mode’ is normal raiding, easy and puggable but not outright guaranteed success. LFR is theme park mode, where the actors pretend to fight but will fall over if you make any effort to beat them.
You might not like the reason, but pseudo-progression IS a reason.
And player retention. It doesn’t have to be one reason, it’s both. So your argument against it is gonna have to beat both at once.
I’d probably argue that while raiding has rather cemented since MoP it hasn’t been impervious to change; LFR loot got gutted in WoD, they changed their stance on Mythic being released on week 2 to Day 1, and now we have a story mode raid to do. IIRC the Flex and Normal raid design was more WoD than MoP, but that’s a bit of semantics; they introduced Flex for SoO, and by WoD they said actually Flex is normal, Heroic is the new normal, and Mythic is the new heroic. Also 20, not 25 now.
That being said I’m not sure what your point here is. Is it that because raiding has not changed massively since MoP and still requires progression therefore LFR must also continue to require that same sense of progression?
Because if that’s your stance my response is that progression raiding is a reward, and one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done in this game. Forcing players to have “progression” in LFR is actually a punishment; nobody who does LFR for content enjoys the pseudo progression they are given via it. No one beats the first wing of LFR and goes “That was fun, I can’t wait to progress the next three bosses when it unlocks in a few weeks and feel all that progression”
And I think it makes sense when LFR is intentionally designed as meaningful end game content for players to engage in and get their relative BiS and see the story. You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too, there are trade-offs. But if LFR is hitting this point of kind of sort of being invalid because gearing methods outside of it are far better, and Story-mode raid exists that lets you see everything anyways so you’re kind of sort of only doing it just for something to do…not a strong case to keep time-gating LFR because people need to experience the sense of progression raiding has to offer.
So wait, are you agreeing that time-gating LFR is done in part by Blizzard to create some player retention?
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It comes down to progression. Players on the higher difficulties are not expected to ful clear their intended difficulty week 1, they are expected to take some time to clear the raid. Yes, mythic raiders will blitz heroic and normal week 1, but they belong in mythic.
LFR, doesn’t have this. It’s an auto-queue, so it’s designed and tuned so that any group of players who meet the minimum ilvl will kill it.
The only way to re-create that progression in LFR is to delay the release of some of the later wings.
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I think the real reason they don’t open all the wings of LFR on day 1 is so the sweats don’t get the opportunity to see the raid mechanics with training wheels before doing normal mode. Just for reference, I’m a sweat who doesn’t test the raid on the PTR.
Imo, remove queued dungeons. Let everything run through the LFG system. It would be great to have a single system for grouped content.
It would also make the transition from leveling dungeons to m+ easier because you wouldn’t have to learn to use a new grouping system at 80.