LFR, Flex, and Elitism

I’ve just discovered that I’m an elitist.  It never occurred to me that of all people, I may be one of ‘those guys’.  You know who I mean.  They post on the forums about how LFR gear should be blue, or refer to LFR gear as welfare epics, or overuse the phrase LFR hero.  I catch myself doing some of those things from time to time.  You see, LFR and I have a love/hate relationship.  I took an extended vacation from WoW during cata (hated that expac).  It’s the only expac that I missed multiple raid tiers.  When LFR was added during DS, I figured I could come back to at least see the raid through LFR without getting back into the game full speed.  Well, you know how that turned out.  I got into a guild with folks I liked and before the end of the expac I had four toons raiding normal and heroic DS.  LFR ended up being less cool than I expected.  It was basically face-roll, so it didn’t hold my interest at all and I ended up in normals.

The Problem

Blizzard was on the right track with LFR though.  They really were!  The game was seriously lacking a few things.

1. A casual raid environment with a lower barrier of entry than normal mode.

2. A means of end-game progression and character growth for the solo player.

LFR killed both of these birds with one stone, but it also broke out a window and knocked the neighbor’s wife unconscious.  In filling these two content holes, it created some large problems along with it.  Because it was a simulated raid environment but lacked the challenge and necessary personal responsibility of normal or heroic mode raid, it trained potential raiders to expect success with very little effort.  They wipe a few times at most in LFR, then they get the kill.   They clear the whole wing in one sitting on the first try.  The only thing holding them back from clearing straight through the end boss in one sitting is the week-at-a-time release gating.

Pull one of these folks into your normal group and see how it goes.  They’re thinking “I’ve done these fights.  I know what’s up”.  Wrong.  They get hit by swirl and die.  They don’t stack for the yellow circle.  They aggro extra trash.  They don’t get out of the raid for pride on Sha.  They stand in poo on Dark Shamans.  They don’t switch to adds for General Nazgrim.  All of these things worked fine in LFR.  So why not in normal mode.  Add to this the fact that their spec/glyphs/gems/enchants/reforge/rotation are a hawt mess and they won’t hear any feedback at all.  Why?  Because it worked fine in LFR!  The bar is too low.

As a means of solo progression, it works extremely well.  The determination buff makes it fairly fool proof.  The rewards come fast and steady, and it stimulates a feeling of accomplishment and progression.  The side effect is that it poisons the potential recruiting pool for raiding guilds.

The Better Casual Raid Option

Flex – This is what LFR should have been!  The difficulty is still fairly low, assuming folks know the fight, have a cursory knowledge of how their spec should work, and can step out of fire.  The differences between Flex and LFR are;

1. Disobeying the fight mechanics in Flex will wipe your group.

2. You can “carry” far fewer players with no clue in Flex.  In some cases, a player or two who don’t know what’s going on equal a wipe.

3. It is less likely that a casual group will clear all wings in one sitting.

The Better Solo End-Game Progression System

Proving Grounds – Now before you disagree, hear me out.  Certainly in it’s current state, it could not serve as end-game progression for the solo player.  But it definitely shows what the devs could do if they set out to create a true solo end-game.  The solo scenarios we’ve seen this expac could be another component.  This option would be the best solution for the game.  Here’s why;

1. A solo player could no longer rely completely on other players to progress.  No more auto-attack LFR superstars.  No more auto-follow shadows collecting free loot.

2. You would have to improve or fail.  This would train a more skilled player-base.

The Golden Goose

This idea goes against solid business practices though, sadly.  The casual masses love the easy epics and tourist mode of LFR!  This expansion has easily been the most casual friendly expansion of all.  So one would expect growth, or at least a slower decline of subscriptions than we’ve seen.  I will admit a decline in subs could be related to a lot of things.  But whatever the actual reason/s, the ultra-casualization of WoW has at least not reversed the trend.    I also think that we may be underestimating the number of former normal/heroic mode raiders who no longer feel the need to challenge themself with normal/heroic because they can get epics and see the content in the drive-thru mode.   I personally know several people just like this.  They usually unsub after they kill the last boss in LFR for the tier.  Perhaps it’s time Blizzard stops spinning plates to desperately please the illusive golden goose at the expense of the more serious player.  It seems clear many of the casual folk have moved on to something else at this point.  The good news is that at the moment the difficulty of SoO LFR seems higher than it had been in previous tiers.  I’m hoping they do not nerf it, but they may.  If they don’t, this shows that perhaps they are coming to the same conclusions I have and are working to press the afker, auto-follower, firestander, and general parasite to become more of a liability to an LFR group, and thereby face the wrath of the community.   Requiring more of LFR is a good thing.

Elitism

Is this mode of thought truly elitism?  I honestly do not think it is.   How exactly is it elitism to desire the general difficulty of the game I love, to require that a player doesn’t stand in fire, knows how to play, and obeys the mechanics of the fight?  It mystifies me that expecting those things of players is considered elitism.  But let’s think this through.

e·lite

əˈlēt,āˈlēt/

noun

a group of people considered (by others or themselves) to be the best in a particular society or category, esp. because of their power, talent, or wealth.

“the wealthy, educated elite”

The elite of our society are the bleeding edge progression guilds; the world-1sters.  At a bare minimum, let’s define the elite as those guilds that kill the final boss of the tier on heroic mode before the next tier is released.  Elitism would be to expect the level of skill, preparation, and dedication of the Heroic Raider from the LFR player.   No one is doing this.  No one.  The bleeding edge progression heroic raider farms for every possible advantage.  They have cleared LFR, Flex, and Normal/Heroic every reset until they have their set bonuses/trinkets.  They cap their valor every week.  They usually do all these things on more than one character, so they can work on the fight through multiple resets in one week.  They know all the fights extremely well.  They know their class better than most of us because they analyze logs of their performance, scouring for ways to improve.  Their raid awareness is 2nd to none.  And they spend far more time raiding than any of us do.  Is this what I’m asking of LFR?  No.  However, I would love nothing more than the reversal of the general bar lowering, participation award, “2+2=5…..<shrug> close enough”, culture and design philosophy that currently holds sway over our world…of warcraft.  Seriously Blizz, it’s killing this game.  Please stop.

Extra! Extra! Flex Eats LFR!!

So is Flex killing LFR?  I think perhaps it is.  But an exploration of why shows how unhealthy LFR was anyway.  Here’s what’s happening.  Players who are competent enough to do Flex instead of LFR are doing just that.  Flex is not much more challenging for them.  They were likely already getting out of fire and doing respectable dps in LFR, so Flex is no real change for them except

1. They get better gear.

2. They escape the parasites who love to make LFR unfun.

3.They get to stick it to those parasites by denying them the ability to be carried to easy epics.

Why would they NOT do this?!  This has been my biggest pet peeve about LFR.  Look at the most obvious example of this.  In ToT LFR, the Duruumu fight nearly always saw more than half the raid die to the maze.  Even after the nerf to the maze, this continued on all the way to the present.  So those who lacked the fine motor skills to not stand in the purple haze received a kill and loot for the efforts of the precious few who managed to live.  Well guess what, the players who always lived on that fight are now doing Flex and skipping LFR and leaving the mosquitos with no blood to suck.  LFR is now populated primarily with those who get kicked from Flex groups, or who never get an invite, or who wouldn’t bother finding a group for Flex anyway.  The ocean of tears is at high tide on the forums over this.  But I must confess folks, I couldn’t be happier.  I guess I’m an elitist.

>luvbacon<