More thoughts on LFR and raiding.

In response to my post on raiding, Crooked had a reply that I enjoyed reading. It's good to get perspective and especially on something as varied as raiding experiences.

I was planning to reply there but as I typed and edited and typed and edited I realized was basically writing a post.  I don't have a problem with long comments but not everyone likes a sub-post to their post, and so I'm back here.

Anyways, Crooked had some good comments that I wanted to discuss.

"Same mechanics, less punishing"

This is a great idea, to me, of what the tuning of LFR should be.  There should be a risk of failure, but it shouldn't be quite like what it is on normal+ raiding.

By having the same mechanics but toned down, you get a couple of benefits. LFR players can become confident enough to try to move up to normal+ raiding, just like Blizzard seems to want.  They've had a taste of the mechanics and can understand how it should be handled, even they aren't yet aware of how quickly it must be handled or anything like that.

Also, when normal+ raiders do come into LFR, for whatever reason, they don't develop the bad habits of not worrying about mechanics, as Grumsta talked about in a comment.  To be fair, this is likely what Blizzard is trying to do but I'm guessing they just have trouble finding that right balance.

I also think they really need to limit single-person-causes-the-raid-wipe in LFR.  When you have a group of individuals that really have minimal communication and investment, team failure because of one or two people is going to really sour the experience.  I won't say never have it, but if you it is a must to the encounter, find a way to give it more room for error

"... so you are not motivated to improve over multiple runs. You don't care about spec or rotation. You just want to get in there, see the content, collect your rewards and get out. Once."

I disagree. I  kind of agree. I agree. I agree. - how's that for a reply? :)  For me, I do want to improve but the homework dedication of a normal+ raider doesn't appeal to me, so you are right that I don't care about spec or rotation in that sense. Or at least, I don't care about it to maximize DPS. I care about what feels fun to play, again for me. Stealing from my own reply to Grumsta:

Despite how I may have made it sound, I don't mind learning a rotation, but I guess...I like discovering it and learning myself. I often actually like theorycrafting in games. It helps me feel like I really know my character. Now, I'm sure I'm not great at it, but I do enjoy it. I think the problem is that my amateur level theorycrafting is good, but not the best and people often want the best for a raid. And I do understand why they would want that. That means if a team would need me to be a certain spec with certain enchants and other such, it would just push me away from raiding.

But Crooked does nail it that, seeing the story to the end once is typically good enough for me. Well, unless the raid is fun in and of itself, but that hasn't been the case this expansion.

"There is no 'legendary grind' for normal+ raiders (ignoring the shipyard, but I won't go there), it just comes eventually, in the process of gearing up and boss progression"

This was a great insight and point.  I hadn't really thought about it but it makes sense (even though I think other bloggers have said it too - maybe I'm just slow on the uptake).  The collection of things would just come as part and parcel of the whole thing of progression raiding.  So that's good to note, but as Crooked also said, it creates a grind feeling for us non-raiders if we care to finish the storyline.

Credit where credit is due though - Blizzard did seem to acknowledge that issue this time by allowing alternative means to collect tomes/stones/macguffins via profession boxes or follower missions or etc.  So, that is actually a good thing that they should be applauded for.  The pace of collection that way is a bit slow but not the end of the world.

"If LFR is meant to be so easy anyone can participate and succeed, make it so, but don't reward people for participating. Unfortunately, I think if you reduce or even take away the reward, no-one will actually want to do it, despite what people say otherwise."

For me, I do think there should be some rewards but I fully agree that it shouldn't be of the level that normal+ gives.  I think the rewards would be needed for two reasons - 1) like you said, without it, participation would drop off and 2) I do still enjoy some gear progression/advancement.

I think what really needs to be addressed, and I'm not sure how to do this yet and am thinking about it elsewhere, is that I feel forced into LFR, if I want to see the story/get the ring/follower/etc.

Now, obviously, I'm not forced to do anything in the game, but, as I've said before, it really does take something out of the game to follow the majority of the story of an expansion and never see it resolved.  You get all of the investment and lore and build-up and then...nothing.  If you don't raid.  If you raid, you get it all.  If you don't, you can go find it out on other websites, but you never get to experience it yourself.  Is that fair?  That's a whole other post and something you did hit on.

 

"This is why I don't hold much hope for LFR, and have leant in the direction of 'remove it'."

I think LFR was doing its job and while it wasn't perfect before, this go round it is especially failing.  But the concept of LFR is good for me.  And I think that's the problem.  Who is LFR for?  Is it tourist mode?  Is it for loregeeks and RP people that want to see the end game story?  Is it for raiders that don't have the time commitment needed for normal+ raiding?

I don't have an answer for this right now and it is all part of the next post I'm thinking about.  But for me, as a casual* player, I think LFR is good in concept but needs love in its current state.

I plan to write another post ruminating on raiding, LFR, fairness and such, but thanks to Crooked for some good feedback that made me think!

* I also some day plan to talk about what does it mean to be "casual".  The fact that I am blogging kind of makes me not causal in a way.  I really wish we knew more about the typical WoW player.  Not so we can judge people that are too involved or too causal or anything like that, but so we can really understand what people know and do.  Again, for a later day.

** Huh.  I'm just now resurfacing into reading blogs and I'm seeing that this LFR conversation has been going on around me.  It was just coincidence that my post hit on LFR because I had bad runs the night before.  Looks like a there is a fair amount of discussion going on.  I guess I'll go read.  You should too.

Could I ever really be a raider?

So, last night I started grinding out my tomes of 33 busywork or whatever.  The story has pretty much lost all interest for me at this point.  Part of that could be because I already knew a fair amount of the story by reading raiders talk about the it and such but, mainly, I'M SO TIRED OF ORCS.  Not really engaged with demons either, which bodes well for Legion.

Anyways, last night I think I realized how much I dislike raiding.  Now, it was LFR, so it wasn't organized raiding with a good team, with good communication, and the reward of group effort in over coming an obstacle.  It wasn't a bad group overall.  Abuse was minimal*, someone only somewhat testily explained mechanics after the few wipes we had, wait times were reasonably short, and the rewards were decent - I got three parts of my mage's Felwhatever set of whateverness.  With some warforging on the one thing.  Yay!

As you can see, my engagement with it is subdued because the grind to get it was just boring.

Actually, quick detour here.  This post is not a criticism of other raiders or that it shouldn't exist or whatever.  While I do think Blizzard puts too much emphasis on raiding and perhaps could better allocate resources to make the game better, I wouldn't want to remove raiding.  This post is more of a thinking-out-loud-about-my-relationship-with-raiding. Mission. Quest. Thing.  Part One, most likely, because I doubt I'll get through everything today.  Time to add that Rambling label.

Okay, and we're back.  So, what was my point? Oh, that while I got upgrades that will improve my game and (possibly?) a tome on every boss, I pretty much hated it. The fights to get to the bosses were boring and repetitive.  The boss fights themselves seemed to go on forever.  Is this possibly due to poor DPS in LFR?  Very much so and I may be part of the problem.  I typically sit about middle of the pack in DPS.  Sometimes in the top 5, sometimes it seems I was trying to gum the boss to death.  But even beyond that, I just felt that I was hitting the same few keys again and again and again and again with no real reason.

And this is one of the reasons why I think I could never really raid.  I don't care to look up the best rotation for my spec.  I don't want to only pick the best talents DPS-wise.  I want to be able to enjoy playing my character and not the cookie-cutter-one-rotation-to-rule-them-all that is best.

I appreciate the point that if I'm not doing my best on a team, then I'm making others carry me.  It's a fair point and I don't actually want to be carried.  But I also don't want to play approved Mage spec #35 with rotation XYZ because that's what's best.  Which is why I think real raiding would never work for me.

But if I care to see the actual story of the expansion?  Then I am forced to join LFR.  If I don't, I get half of the game and, very specifically, not the end.  So, when I go into LFR I do my best to read the guide and listen and do whatever I can not to be the load.  The thing is, that isn't a fun feeling.  Trying hard not to weigh down a team - especially when you are only a "team" in the loosest sense of the word.

Beyond me and my idiosyncrasies of wanting to play how I want to play, there are also the fights themselves. Fiannor had a post recently about "What makes a boss fight fun?" and it is interesting and something I never found time to comment on there. It's something I want to comment on more in-depth at another time but for now, boringly long fights where you can probably use Heroism twice in the fight would fall under "not fun" for me.  Again, that may be due to LFR damage being low and thus taking a long time to down a boss, but then LFR should probably be revisited.  Grumpy, Fiannor, and others have better thoughts on that. (although I'm having trouble finding them this morning. Whatever).

So, I guess I end this where I basically started.  I know I'm not a raider and I'm fine with that.  There was just something about last night's grind that really struck me about how much I disliked it.  There's likely more to this topic but I should head off.


Writing tic of the day: I had thought it would be "whatever" but "so" seems to have beaten that out today.  It does most days, to be fair.  Commas are, of course, disqualified because I've never met a sentence I couldn't beat a comma into.

* Blizzard - if the phrase - "Abuse was minimal" is considered an element of a decent group, you might have a toxic community.  Heads up.

On my impromptu hiatus

So, where have you been?

I've been waiting here.  The whole time.

What do you have to say for yourself?

In the same vein of truth-telling, trade chat is full of articulate, well-reasoned discussion.

To the actual reasons for my absence:

- the IT department at my work changed...something...and as such it has become a bit more challenging to log in at work.
- work has been a bit busier of late.
- when I'm at home, I typically want to play WoW if I'm on the computer, so I'm not really writing at home.

It really wasn't any one thing, just a confluence of events.

But what have I been doing in game?

Having fun exploring content, although very little in Draenor.

The spouse and I finally hit the Isle of Giants and have had fun getting pets and mounts.  At 100, our hunters are just tearing through things. This is good because we aren't the only ones there so, if we don't move quickly, the place will be empty in no time.  We're both working on the 9,999 bones, although neither of us really care about the mount; other than as the count towards the next mount achievement.  It's a fun place to just hunt, skin, and collect while we zone out together and/or talk about the stresses of work and the day. (addendum: the spouse was having ridiculous luck tonight - in about 10-15 minutes two Direhorn Runts dropped as did somewhere around 4-5 Zandalari raptors. I can't remember if it was the Anklerenders, Footslashers, Kneebiters, or Toenibblers. It doesn't matter, it was amazing.

We had another pet-focused goal recently, this one back in Deepholm.  Neither of our hunters had finished the Deepholm quests, so we hadn't unlocked the dailies (another problem with leveling too fast in old content). So in order to be able to tame Jadefang and get the Tiny Shale Spider, we had to finish the storyline in Deepholm and then wait for the daily to pop-up.

Huh, just thought of another few pet/mount goals we did.  We finished the quest line to get the Lashtail Hatchling in Zul'gurub and the Amani Battle Bear in Zul'Aman.

Beyond that, my main playing has been the drudgery of the Brewfest dailies. I wanted the one pet, some toys I didn't have, and perhaps an heirloom upgrade.  So grinding out the back and forth of delivering kegs.  I kind of like Brewfest overall, but having this chore does take some of the fun out of it.  To be fair, I didn't have to get any of that so it was self-imposed.  Still, I like being able to experience the "holiday" more than I did this time.  Not specifically this holiday.  Just those holidays in general.

Also, I'm perilously close to breaking 100,000 gold on my first character ever.  Some people never see that amount of gold and others make that without trying.  For me, making gold have never been a talent.  I'm not working at it with any great effort right now, mostly follower missions at this point.  But it took a bit of work to get this far and I'm happy to reach this goal.

I hope to get back in the swing of things here as I enjoyed this and it was a great outlet for me.  I also enjoyed reading and commenting on other people's blog, so I hope to be able to get back to that.