LFR/Flex and heroic raiders

Darielle wrote:What do you think I've said? I've pointed out a few different implementations where Heroic raiders won't be incentivised to go into LFR for power upgrades - even simple things like a loot lockout which the Legendary chain already has.

The problem with the legendary chain is that the entire loot is personal. In addition, the rewards for doing it on LFR or Normal are the same. It's pretty easy to implement there, without any annoying side effects.

For actual loot lockouts, there are three problems:
1) The loot ain't the same. If you do LFR first, and then Normal, you'd rather have the Normal pieces than the LFR pieces.
2) If you're not able to get any loot in Normal, why would you go Normal? What reason do you have of being there?
3) The boss still drops two/six pieces of loot, right? So because one half is locked out, the other half gets more gear? This would lead to weird setups where on the odd weeks, 5 members of the raid squad would run LFR before normal, while on the even weeks, the other 5 members of the raid squad would run LFR before normal.

And what if I don't get any loot in normal, because nothing dropped for me, or I lost all the rolls? Am I still eligible to get loot in LFR?

3) The boss still drops two/six pieces of loot, right? So because one half is locked out, the other half gets more gear? This would lead to weird setups where on the odd weeks, 5 members of the raid squad would run LFR before normal, while on the even weeks, the other 5 members of the raid squad would run LFR before normal.

Huh?

The loot the boss drops in a Normal raid is independent of who's in the raid. 5 people being locked out won't make the other half get more gear, they'll get the same Intellect plate that's dropped 15x alraedy.

1) The loot ain't the same. If you do LFR first, and then Normal, you'd rather have the Normal pieces than the LFR pieces.
2) If you're not able to get any loot in Normal, why would you go Normal? What reason do you have of being there?

This IS a slight complication, but it's not hard to remedy. Similar to loot specialisation, the purposes would be served by allowing a person to opt out of receiving loot.
A person with a standard raid isn't going to want to do LFR for the loots before Normal anyway, his only possible interest would be in getting bosses he missed out on, but it gives him freedom to do so (helping a friend etc.) without affecting his raid status. A person whose schedule is unclear (in that he doesn't know if he'll get a good pug or whether his guild will raid) gets a guaranteed payoff anyway.

And what if I don't get any loot in normal, because nothing dropped for me, or I lost all the rolls? Am I still eligible to get loot in LFR?

Would you expect to be able to double dip loot from different lockouts just because nothing dropped, EVER? Aside from the back that double/tripping dipping loot just because nothing dropped is still just as silly, it would be pretty counterintuitive to allow it to happen just because nothing dropped, seeing as that's the major reason it IS a thing.

Darielle wrote:AC3's story isn't bad, but the gameplay is just silly. FOr a lot of it, you just randomly click, win and move on.

Blizzard already stated that different lockouts wouldn't work. Say there's this Bob in your raiding guild that doesn't raid, only LFR. He casually works his way through the LFR instances during the first few evenings of the week. Then on monday, Joe got sick, so you need a replacement, and Bob just happens to be online. Right now, you can pull Bob in, and see how he does. If they shared lockouts, even if that were just loot lockouts, you couldn't take Bob along. (And no, specifying that Bob in illegible for loot because he already had his chance on loot in LFR doesn't work, because the boss still drops 2/6 pieces.)

That doesn't actually affect looting. Bob's presence or eligibility for loot doesn't affect the loot that does drop, so whether the boss drops the same 2 pieces and only 8, 9 or 2 people CAN loot it won't make those people get more loot, or change anything. Bob being ineligible as a Rogue won't mean that Agi Leather won't drop.

It's not like, say, DS LFR where having people locked out made things better.

Perhaps for 10 man, you're likely to shard it. Say Joe and Bob are both rogues, and there's no other agi leathers in the group. Any further agi leather gear would be dissed anyhow. But what about 25 mans, where the other rogue is then getting all the agi leather gear, or perhaps the monk or feral druid is? Or what if you also had a Brewmaster in your 10 man group, who's suddenly getting all the loot, rather than having to share it with Joe?

As said, it would start to become really advantageous to send one half of the raid squad to LFR before the raid, so they get the LFR gear, and you're still able to give all the gear to the other half of the raid, so you're not really wasting any. The next week, you switch it around, and send the other half into LFR first.

And... What's Bob going to get from all this? Perhaps it's his first time in normal, and he's getting a decent experience while helping out his friends. But what if you can't take Bob but have to look for a random. That random ain't going to get anything at all from your run, so he has zero incentive to tag along.

You still come down to the choice "Do I want to go ahead and run LFR this week, or should I try and remain unlocked, in the hopes that I can join a normal run and get some gear there?" Blizzard clearly stated they do not want to force players to make that choice.

Darielle wrote:

People that currently have ToT HC on farm have about 543ish gear. The 528 gear from LFR won't cut it. The 540 gear from Flex might with upgrades, but people that have ToT HC on farm will progress quite rapidly through SoO and loot some 553 items, and since you can only upgrade 2 items per week on average, they are more likely to save their valor on upgrading 553 gear to 561.

Do you typically get more than 2 pieces every week, in your experience?
Would you choose to upgrade a 553 ring or neck or cloak and NOT a 540 Chest or Legs or Weapon or Trinket? Because I know what >I'd< upgrade there, and isn't not the higher item level.

Also, side note, I would say that the people with Normal on farm and dabbling in a few HC mode ARE the Heroic raiders. They're in fact the majority of them. People with Ra-Den down not so much.

Early on in the new tier, yes, it's quite likely to get two pieces per week, since you can still use about everything.

As for upgrading a 553 ring or a 540 chest... I'll probably going to keep that ring for a while, while the 540 chest will be replaced pretty soon, even if I upgrade it, so I'd likely upgrade the 553 ring, especially if I have a 543 chest as well, making the chest upgrade only 5 ilvls, rather than 8.

Darielle wrote:

3) The boss still drops two/six pieces of loot, right? So because one half is locked out, the other half gets more gear? This would lead to weird setups where on the odd weeks, 5 members of the raid squad would run LFR before normal, while on the even weeks, the other 5 members of the raid squad would run LFR before normal.

Huh?

The loot the boss drops in a Normal raid is independent of who's in the raid. 5 people being locked out won't make the other half get more gear, they'll get the same Intellect plate that's dropped 15x alraedy.

But it will make the other half get more gear... Sure, there's intellect plate, but there are also a ton of items that have a lot of overlap between different people. Several people being on lockout would certainly mean that there are a couple of pieces going to other people on default, that might've gone to one of the other people that are now on lockout, especially in 25 man.

Darielle wrote:

1) The loot ain't the same. If you do LFR first, and then Normal, you'd rather have the Normal pieces than the LFR pieces.
2) If you're not able to get any loot in Normal, why would you go Normal? What reason do you have of being there?

This IS a slight complication, but it's not hard to remedy. Similar to loot specialisation, the purposes would be served by allowing a person to opt out of receiving loot.
A person with a standard raid isn't going to want to do LFR for the loots before Normal anyway, his only possible interest would be in getting bosses he missed out on, but it gives him freedom to do so (helping a friend etc.) without affecting his raid status. A person whose schedule is unclear (in that he doesn't know if he'll get a good pug or whether his guild will raid) gets a guaranteed payoff anyway.

Besides the fact that this would complicate the UI, and lead to a lot of issues and tickets about "I forgot to enable/disable loot eligibility", it would also force people to make a choice "Should I run LFR this week and get some loot from that? Or should I remain unsaved in the hopes that I run into a nice group?" Blizzard already stated they don't want players to have to make that choice.

Darielle wrote:

And what if I don't get any loot in normal, because nothing dropped for me, or I lost all the rolls? Am I still eligible to get loot in LFR?

Would you expect to be able to double dip loot from different lockouts just because nothing dropped, EVER? Aside from the back that double/tripping dipping loot just because nothing dropped is still just as silly, it would be pretty counterintuitive to allow it to happen just because nothing dropped, seeing as that's the major reason it IS a thing.

I'll agree with you there, but the system will be rather confusing, and people might have that question.



Overall, I deem it more likely that they would simply hand out the LFR chance on loot for free in Normal/Heroic, rather than going with this "loot lockout" system, that's both complex and abuse-able.

Another thing I just thought of... It would force people to go through the list of every single item that can drop from a boss, and assign every single item to a player before killing the boss, so that players that don't have an item assigned to them can make themselves ineligible for loot, and run the boss on LFR.

Perhaps for 10 man, you're likely to shard it. Say Joe and Bob are both rogues, and there's no other agi leathers in the group. Any further agi leather gear would be dissed anyhow. But what about 25 mans, where the other rogue is then getting all the agi leather gear, or perhaps the monk or feral druid is? Or what if you also had a Brewmaster in your 10 man group, who's suddenly getting all the loot, rather than having to share it with Joe?

As said, it would start to become really advantageous to send one half of the raid squad to LFR before the raid, so they get the LFR gear, and you're still able to give all the gear to the other half of the raid, so you're not really wasting any. The next week, you switch it around, and send the other half into LFR first.

These aren't things that change from current. If you wanted to give loot to half the raid, you already can. And the other half is already doing LFR, so at worst case you're .... not changing anything for 100% of the people

And... What's Bob going to get from all this? Perhaps it's his first time in normal, and he's getting a decent experience while helping out his friends. But what if you can't take Bob but have to look for a random. That random ain't going to get anything at all from your run, so he has zero incentive to tag along.

That thing you just had in the second sentence. It's an incentive.

You still come down to the choice "Do I want to go ahead and run LFR this week, or should I try and remain unlocked, in the hopes that I can join a normal run and get some gear there?" Blizzard clearly stated they do not want to force players to make that choice.

Early on in the new tier, yes, it's quite likely to get two pieces per week, since you can still use about everything.

As for upgrading a 553 ring or a 540 chest... I'll probably going to keep that ring for a while, while the 540 chest will be replaced pretty soon, even if I upgrade it, so I'd likely upgrade the 553 ring, especially if I have a 543 chest as well, making the chest upgrade only 5 ilvls, rather than 8.

How do you plot that? The likelihood of you holding onto that ring is the exact same, since Rings are more generally dispersed, you'll have access to Heroic Rings from week 1 of Heroics. Moreoever, unlike with the Chest, you're just as likely to haev the exact same ring drop as you would a different one.

And if you've been getting 2 pieces a week on average, and everyone in your raid has been in the same boat, that's some pretty ballsy luck going on there. Bearing in mind that you WON'T use just about everything. Even for us as Paladins, a 553 Dodge/Parry piece is not going to be as attractive as some of the 543's we're using now. Some of the offset pieces won't even be worth using for specs until they have all 4 pieces, or will never be used over tier pieces. Cloaks are pretty guaranteed to be sharded in any normal raiding guild.

You still come down to the choice "Do I want to go ahead and run LFR this week, or should I try and remain unlocked, in the hopes that I can join a normal run and get some gear there?" Blizzard clearly stated they do not want to force players to make that choice.

This isn't a choice, especially since LFR is winged and a person is not going to just pop into a Normal run and kill Garrosh at the start of the tier. A person who openraids Flex has a pretty much guaranteed kill, on the other hand, so there's no choice to make for him/her either.

But it will make the other half get more gear... Sure, there's intellect plate, but there are also a ton of items that have a lot of overlap between different people. Several people being on lockout would certainly mean that there are a couple of pieces going to other people on default, that might've gone to one of the other people that are now on lockout, especially in 25 man.

But that's something that you can already do. If youw ant your BM to get the loots, you can give him the loots regardless of if the Rogue is locked out or not. On Live, the Rogue is also supplementing with LFR in said hypothetical, so his continuation of LFR for his loot is no change on his personal part, so you've got 50% effect, which doesn't really destroy the entire premise.

Besides the fact that this would complicate the UI, and lead to a lot of issues and tickets about "I forgot to enable/disable loot eligibility", it would also force people to make a choice "Should I run LFR this week and get some loot from that? Or should I remain unsaved in the hopes that I run into a nice group?" Blizzard already stated they don't want players to have to make that choice.

See above regarding choice, and I forgot to enable/disable DOES actually fall into player responsiblity.
More to the point, it doesn't complicate UI any more than selecting your Role in the Dungeon Finder does.

So, you say Blizz doesn't want to force players to make a choice, but because Blizz takes that position, it forces Heroic Raiders to do LFR/Flex because the incentive to get the trinket/tier pieces is too high in relation to how boring LFR/Flex is.

And thus, you want lockouts so these people, because they can't control themselves, dont feel forced to do LFR/Flex.

That seems rather selfish.

If they implement the lockouts, the people that are affected the most would be those in Normal raids that haven't been able to complete all the content.

Some raiding groups don't raid till the weekend, or even monday, so if they don't wanna get locked out, they cannot do anything until raid time, then after that is when they can do Flex/LFR.

And your solution about marking what boss you want to be eligible for loot thru the UI seems awfully complicated. If they want to do that, we would know what to do, but the avg person would not. Blizz' most simple solution is the one they currently have.

All because some poor widdle heroic raider feels forced to do boring LFR/Flex.

Darielle wrote:These aren't things that change from current. If you wanted to give loot to half the raid, you already can. And the other half is already doing LFR, so at worst case you're .... not changing anything for 100% of the people

Indeed, these aren't changing from current. You keep the incentive for people to run LFR on top of normal with this loot lockout system. It just became a lot more complex.

Darielle wrote:

You still come down to the choice "Do I want to go ahead and run LFR this week, or should I try and remain unlocked, in the hopes that I can join a normal run and get some gear there?" Blizzard clearly stated they do not want to force players to make that choice.

This isn't a choice, especially since LFR is winged and a person is not going to just pop into a Normal run and kill Garrosh at the start of the tier. A person who openraids Flex has a pretty much guaranteed kill, on the other hand, so there's no choice to make for him/her either.

Perhaps not at the very start of a tier, but there are plenty of pugs going on in say a month and a half after the new raid opening. Say Bob has been doing a bit of LFRs and Flex, and together with some valor upgrades, he's sitting at 543 ilvl. He has the gear to run SoO normal if he gets into a decent group, so he has a big choice to make now. Run Flex again, and hopefully upgrade his ilvl to 544 or perhaps 545, or wait for sunday and monday, knowing that there will be some guilds on monday that might need a random, or perhaps there's a proper alt run he can jump into. Perhaps he joins a group from boss seven, and downs a couple of bosses, but because it's monday evening now, he doesn't have time to LFR the rest anymore. Or perhaps the alt group wasn't as proper as it looked, and they only killed a single boss, but again, there's no time left to farm LFR.

It also forces Bob to just idle and wait, not running any LFRs until the very last moment, and then run them all on monday in a row.

Darielle wrote:See above regarding choice, and I forgot to enable/disable DOES actually fall into player responsiblity.
More to the point, it doesn't complicate UI any more than selecting your Role in the Dungeon Finder does.

The Loot Specialization defaults to "Current spec", so people that are unaware of the option still get loot as normal. And of course nobody ever goofed that up, or forgot to change the instance to normal or heroic, so nobody will ever goof this up either.



The problem with your loot lockout system, is that it has a lot of issues, and still doesn't solve the problem. It still forces people to run LFR, just using a much more complex system, by checking before every boss which people will get the loot, and then having all others disable their loot eligibility, so they can run LFR after...

And on the flip side, not every heroic raider is going to dislike Flex. Some heroic raiders do enjoy a more casual environment where they can bring their friends that they can't bring to the heroic raids because those friends will keep progression down.

Having been in both a hardcore raiding guild (Edge during BC) and casual guilds...

Absolutely no one is forcing heroic raiders, especially those shooting for world/realm firsts, to do LFR and Flex for additional drops for the race. It is entirely the choice of those raiders. You don't want to do it? Don't do it. Simple as that. Hell, some of us run LFR first to get drops + the basics of the encounters in order to help teach our guild the fights because we/our guild doesn't have time to do our normal raiding schedule + work + RL stuff + PTR.

Translation: Things are fine as they are. Four difficulties may be too many, but a number of you are suspecting normal going away in 6.0 and I have a friend that fully anticipates flex Heroics in 6.0. Let's let the data determine if it's too many based on what people are running; I know my guild won't be running flex mostly due to time constraints even though it'll be beneficial to have all 15 raiders in raid with a chance at loot.

I don't understand this argument. Does it boil down to: all raids should share loot lockout so running all difficulties is not incentivized?

fuzzygeek wrote:I don't understand this argument. Does it boil down to: all raids should share loot lockout so running all difficulties is not incentivized?

to put it charitably, or slightly less so:

I want there to be loot lockouts, or at least something that gives me an extra chance at some sort of upgrade over the previous tier without doing content below the level I wish to play.

fuzzygeek wrote:I don't understand this argument. Does it boil down to: all raids should share loot lockout so running all difficulties is not incentivized?

In a sense, yes. Although the only ones asking for that are heroic raiders.

fuzzygeek wrote:I don't understand this argument. Does it boil down to: all raids should share loot lockout so running all difficulties is not incentivized?

It boils down to "I'm trying so desperately to be a special snowflake and LFR/Flex shouldn't drop any useable loot because I'm a loot obsessed drone with no self control"

Darielle wrote:But:
- The only people talking about anyone being forced to do anything are you.

Forced is in quotes because it isn't forced, but it is the mentality displayed by the people complaining. Much in the same way I said people were "forced" to do dailies in 5.0.

But from the way you're arguing you feel people who greatly benefit from trinkets or tier bonuses are "forced" to do content below their level since the power incentive is so great.

And it was the self-playing of AC3 that was batty to me, the platforming section was point and run for the most part. Luckily I also got Dishonored for $10 so I can enjoy a game.

So... heroic raider still wants to be special, right? Ok, how about this. Put HC on it's own lockout. Once you start on a HC lockout, you can downrank to normal on that lockout, but are unable to run LFR or Flex that week. If you only run normal, you are allowed to go into Flex and LFR as separate lockouts.

There, now the HC snowflakes aren't incentivized *coughforcedcough* to run the other lockouts, and no one else gets screwed by the snowflake protection lockout.

Edit: One more addition. If you do Flex or LFR earlier in the week, you will be unable to attempt heroic bosses that week.

I think Darielle's main point was that from a design perspective Blizzard are incentivising something that people find boring/not fun to do.

In a similar way to being feel compelled to do a lot of daily's, etc.

I don't think anyone is arguing that you can choose not to do that content. But that as a general design principal it's pretty poor.

I feel it's very easy to say "If you don't enjoy it don't do it" but a lot of people "do it" anyway. And it's whether this playstyle is healthy/good for the game that is the real issue.

I don't think Darielle, or other hc raiders feel that LFR undermines their awesomeness. They'd just rather not feel incentivised to do it. I know i share the opinion myself. I also know i'm awesome in my HC gear.

'cept it's not a real incentive. Blizz just says, here's the loottables based on which version of the raid you do.

It's the hard core raider that looks across their content and into the LFR/Flex and says "I assign this subjective value to this particular shiny, therefore Blizz is incentivizing me to run LFR/Flex to get an extra chance at shiny"

The difference between the dailies and the LFR/Flex having a subjective value to HC raiders is that people were calling for the rewards of the dailies to be more open (not being restricted behind VP and Rep), whereas the HC raiders want the rewards from LFR/Flex to be more restricted so the game prevents them from falling into temptation.

Darielle's earlier proposal was a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist, and only causes more problems than it solves.

I agree with all your points except that i don't agree the problem doesn't exist.

Whether it's worth addressing is another issue. Certainly it's possible to pick holes in Blizzard's interpretation of the issue of assigning loot to 4 raid difficulties. However with a system as complicated as this one it's difficult to see how you could possible please everyone.

I for one am at least in favor of Flex, and i will choose to do this over LFR simply because it's more community driven which i think is an important aspect of mmo's that needs to be preserved.

Winkle wrote:I don't think Darielle, or other hc raiders feel that LFR undermines their awesomeness. They'd just rather not feel incentivised to do it. I know i share the opinion myself. I also know i'm awesome in my HC gear.

Yes, but it seems that for LFR and Flex to not "incentivize" HC raiders, it seems that they want to so nuke LFR and Flex that NO one would want to do it, especially considering the forum posters that want to remove loot from LFR completely.

That's why I like my HC lockout idea. You are that leet, you are locked out from running the other content.

Winkle wrote:I agree with all your points except that i don't agree the problem doesn't exist.

Whether it's worth addressing is another issue. Certainly it's possible to pick holes in Blizzard's interpretation of the issue of assigning loot to 4 raid difficulties. However with a system as complicated as this one it's difficult to see how you could possible please everyone.

I for one am at least in favor of Flex, and i will choose to do this over LFR simply because it's more community driven which i think is an important aspect of mmo's that needs to be preserved.

Fine, the problem exist, but for a really small fraction of the population, which is why I think Watcher took that position on his post, and considers it to be pretty much a non-problem.

I'm going to recall what I've sai before - back when I was a HC raider, now not even an LFR raider.
The probelm does exist.
I've yet to see any suggested solutions that would satisfy any criteria that are fair.

In DS one of our other tanks kept telling me I should run LFR to get the 4pc bonus (which I did not see as very interesting, based on our actual raid composition and what we had issues with) - henc eI didn't do it.
(Of course, it didn't help, that that same tank ran LFR, and picked up tier pieces in normal too (!) and used them for his dps spec (I was not the maintank, so no excuse there) - of course we did see the same ... shall we call it self-centeredness- when said tank defected to servers top guild without notice leaving us with a probelm on the dps front (that was directly contributing to the collapse of the raidgroup).

4 differents id & difficulty is indeed too much

from start, flex should have been set for NM. and not create a new f### intermidairay level

-at one extrem :
for those solo player, whitout any agenda control, no full dedication for raid --> LFR
-at the other extrem :
for "minmax" players --> HardMode
-in between
for standard pve roster --> Normal mode, with the option to ajust raid lengh, which allow some more easier roster management and less stress for "normal" guild (and then later, try HM with their top player)

oldboyz wrote:from start, flex should have been set for NM. and not create a new f### intermidairay level

I'm betting Aaron Rodger's next year salary on Flex replacing NM next expac.

I actually do think having a step in between LFR and Normal is nice. LFR is too piss easy. Everyone and their mom can do it. But that's just the way some people like it, so LFR has it's place. It's currently a gigantic step from LFR to Normal, and a lot of people want to move on from LFR, but simply have no place in a Normal guild. For those people that are farming LFR, but can't connect to Normal, Flex is a place. Scrapping Normal for Flex doesn't seem like a good idea to me, because both have their places.

I disagree with the people that keep yelling "If you don't wanna do it, then don't do it." If you have an option to improve yourself, you can choose between "Improving yourself" and "Holding back 9 or 24 of your buddies". The people that keep yelling "If you don't wanna do it, then don't do it." are basically yelling "You should hold 9 or 24 of your buddies back." Not everyone feels comfortable about holding back their buddies, even if it's only to a small degree. WoW is not a singleplayer game. Doing something or not doing something doesn't just affect yourself, it affects a lot of other players too.

If there is an option to gear up, then there's a big incentive for people to do that, and people will do that content for various reasons other than that they enjoy that part of the content. A bit of that is healthy in WoW. After all, it's an "investment leads to reward" kind of game. It starts to become a problem when there's too much investment to be had within a certain amount of time.

However, loot lockout has a lot of strings attached, and doesn't actually fix the problem. In some cases, it might make things worse. Hence loot lockout is not the solution.

Actual raid lockout like Halabar suggests is also not an option that feels like something that would work well. First off, it might urge people to run normals + flex + LFR instead of HCs for a week or 2-3 longer, just for the increased chances of loot, rather than trying the first boss HC, if you're not really feeling ready for it yet. It will demoralize people that might be ready to start HC from actually trying to do HC.

Secondly, some of the HC raiders actually enjoy a more casual evening with some friends in the Flex environment, without having to worry about lockouts, or that some of their friends aren't exactly ready for raiding yet. These players would be needlessly locked out of enjoyable content.

Finally, the problem remains where you can't bring in people for certain bosses, if they did LFR or Flex already.

In the end, I think it's best to keep things the way they are right now. Yes, it's a bit of a problem and annoyance that even if you are a Normal or HC raider, it might be advantageous to run LFR or Flex, but it's being minimized while still keeping the loot rewarding for those to whom LFR and Flex are intended. It is extra investment for a small bit of reward, but is it really so bad compared to say 5.0 where you had to run LFR and a ton of dailies every day next to your normal/heroic raiding?

Thels wrote:I disagree with the people that keep yelling "If you don't wanna do it, then don't do it." If you have an option to improve yourself, you can choose between "Improving yourself" and "Holding back 9 or 24 of your buddies". The people that keep yelling "If you don't wanna do it, then don't do it." are basically yelling "You should hold 9 or 24 of your buddies back." Not everyone feels comfortable about holding back their buddies, even if it's only to a small degree. WoW is not a singleplayer game. Doing something or not doing something doesn't just affect yourself, it affects a lot of other players too.

If there is an option to gear up, then there's a big incentive for people to do that, and people will do that content for various reasons other than that they enjoy that part of the content. A bit of that is healthy in WoW. After all, it's an "investment leads to reward" kind of game. It starts to become a problem when there's too much investment to be had within a certain amount of time.

This was the reason my old guild/raid fell apart, several people had no desire for dailies, and decided to quit the game cuz they felt they were holding the raid back. I took the poison pill and trudged thru the dailies until I got over the hump. But in the end, it was a choice. Some chose to do the dailies, some didn't.

Thels wrote:However, loot lockout has a lot of strings attached, and doesn't actually fix the problem. In some cases, it might make things worse. Hence loot lockout is not the solution.

Actual raid lockout like Halabar suggests is also not an option that feels like something that would work well. First off, it might urge people to run normals + flex + LFR instead of HCs for a week or 2-3 longer, just for the increased chances of loot, rather than trying the first boss HC, if you're not really feeling ready for it yet. It will demoralize people that might be ready to start HC from actually trying to do HC.

Secondly, some of the HC raiders actually enjoy a more casual evening with some friends in the Flex environment, without having to worry about lockouts, or that some of their friends aren't exactly ready for raiding yet. These players would be needlessly locked out of enjoyable content.

Finally, the problem remains where you can't bring in people for certain bosses, if they did LFR or Flex already.

In the end, I think it's best to keep things the way they are right now. Yes, it's a bit of a problem and annoyance that even if you are a Normal or HC raider, it might be advantageous to run LFR or Flex, but it's being minimized while still keeping the loot rewarding for those to whom LFR and Flex are intended. It is extra investment for a small bit of reward, but is it really so bad compared to say 5.0 where you had to run LFR and a ton of dailies every day next to your normal/heroic raiding?

This is why I think Slashie's solution would be worse than the "problem" she's trying to solve.

And I think Watcher agrees that the best thing is to keep the status quo, which is why he replied like that in that post.