Hagu in a comment caught an inconsistency in my posts: "[you] seem to mock M&S who see the same content as you with less effort. If someone sees the same boss down as you but got it with less skill and gear than you, then under the "just get the job done" goal, haven't they just achieved the same goal as you, albeit more efficiently?"Since I'm a big fan of efficiency, it's really strange that I always criticize the most efficient beings of the world, the M&S. They are the welfare leeches of WoW, they get everything for minimal to none effort. I should be praising them. This needs clarifying.
Actually I don't have any problem with the M&S, I have problems with the people who boost them, because they also demand me to boost them. In all the guilds I was it was obvious that we bring "friends" along, even if their performance was way below "good enough". Pointing out the obvious fact that they don't pull their weight was outrageous. I noticed soon that I either join a topguild with 4+ raids/week, 75% min attendance, or I don't join any guild at all. Since I don't want to spend so much time with a video game, especially not with repeating content over and over, the first option is closed for me, so here I am, guildless.
I learned the hard way that people (except for those who strive for excellency) have very high tolerance towards M&S, as long as they are friendly. So stating the obvious fact that the M&S is useless brought me nothing but drama. If I keep silent but don't help them, I get frowned upon, called selfish and soon asked to leave. I learned that social people value social connections above real things in real life and content-things in WoW. Even referring to real things is "cold", since proper handling of real things provide you some kind of material reward (as opposed to emotional reward). So the people don't question the fact that the M&S is useless. They just claim that their uselessness is irrelevant compared to their friendliness, and even pointing out this irrelevant flaw is offensive and evil.
Well, I wouldn't be me, if I'd just give up, accepting that I will forever have to boost the M&S, and do it in silence and smiling, or be alone (or join some pointlessly competitive excellence-thriving group). I've found a loophole in the thinking method of the social people: while they don't care about the performance of the others, they do care about their intentions and effort. So all I have to prove is that the M&S is responsible for being useless. This logic is quite counter-intuitive to me, I don't care why someone does something, I do care what he does. However I accept this is the way social people think, so I adapt to it.
The point of bashing the M&S, proving how minimal effort it would need to have proper performance is not to change the M&S. They are already efficient. The point is to change the social people, to see the moron and slacker in the non-performer, and not the unlucky "gearless" victim. If I can convince the social people that the M&S is on-purposely leech on them, they will turn on the M&S and kick him out.
Rereading this post I just recognized that I did not answer the question of the title. The answer is simple: the M&S is simply not good enough. They need boosting. And I won't be the guy who boost them.
PS: "M&S" is still morons and slackers.
Actually I don't have any problem with the M&S, I have problems with the people who boost them, because they also demand me to boost them. In all the guilds I was it was obvious that we bring "friends" along, even if their performance was way below "good enough". Pointing out the obvious fact that they don't pull their weight was outrageous. I noticed soon that I either join a topguild with 4+ raids/week, 75% min attendance, or I don't join any guild at all. Since I don't want to spend so much time with a video game, especially not with repeating content over and over, the first option is closed for me, so here I am, guildless.
I learned the hard way that people (except for those who strive for excellency) have very high tolerance towards M&S, as long as they are friendly. So stating the obvious fact that the M&S is useless brought me nothing but drama. If I keep silent but don't help them, I get frowned upon, called selfish and soon asked to leave. I learned that social people value social connections above real things in real life and content-things in WoW. Even referring to real things is "cold", since proper handling of real things provide you some kind of material reward (as opposed to emotional reward). So the people don't question the fact that the M&S is useless. They just claim that their uselessness is irrelevant compared to their friendliness, and even pointing out this irrelevant flaw is offensive and evil.
Well, I wouldn't be me, if I'd just give up, accepting that I will forever have to boost the M&S, and do it in silence and smiling, or be alone (or join some pointlessly competitive excellence-thriving group). I've found a loophole in the thinking method of the social people: while they don't care about the performance of the others, they do care about their intentions and effort. So all I have to prove is that the M&S is responsible for being useless. This logic is quite counter-intuitive to me, I don't care why someone does something, I do care what he does. However I accept this is the way social people think, so I adapt to it.
The point of bashing the M&S, proving how minimal effort it would need to have proper performance is not to change the M&S. They are already efficient. The point is to change the social people, to see the moron and slacker in the non-performer, and not the unlucky "gearless" victim. If I can convince the social people that the M&S is on-purposely leech on them, they will turn on the M&S and kick him out.
Rereading this post I just recognized that I did not answer the question of the title. The answer is simple: the M&S is simply not good enough. They need boosting. And I won't be the guy who boost them.
PS: "M&S" is still morons and slackers.
31 comments:
"I noticed soon that I either join a topguild with 4+ raids/week, 75% min attendance, or I don't join any guild at all"
Why not make your own guild? You can determine your own contribution and schedule while maintaining your standards provided you have competent officers to delegate to when you're not around.
Running any kind of sufficient raiding guild requires way more effort then being in a topguild only as a member, imo.
Just because you haven't met a casual guild that maintains contribution (dps, heals, standard raid courtesy) standards doesn't mean they don't exist. We have people who we do take along more because they are friends but they far surpass your "good enough" minimum.
Well, a point of view is that the casual guilds are so scared of drama that boost the M&S just for not dissolve the guild in said drama.
That point of view is flawed because no matter how casual is a guild, if the other people know that your guild is full of idiots your guild will die for its bad reputation.
I know, because ive found myself guildless after a vacation because of that.
How would you consider the action of boosting alts in the guild? The players themselves are certainly skilled (or we wouldn't be downing Sarth+3D) but their alts are simply undergeared. In this case, I'm boosting non-M&S. Are you gonna tell me that having alts is pointless and inefficient to begin with?
" Anonymous said...
It is pathetic that you still see social skills as less "real" then WoW (a purely artificial virtual world)skills."
You are missing the point. Letting leechers ruin your raid and gearing them as a reward for doing so demonstrates a LACK of social skills. Possessing social skills would imply that said possessor would construct/belong to a functioning society. A raid with leechers is a dysfunctional society, perhaps a real world analogy will help.
Someone who in real life was extremely financially successful, and whose day to day society consisted mainly of people who did nothing productive and leeched off his hard work, would be considered by most to have poor social skills. "Hey man, I got laid off again, can I bum another 3 grand off you?"
I am not suggesting that people shouldn't spend time with those who aren't at the exact same income level, although such stratification is more common than not, I'm just saying that in the real world those who can't pay for their own food/apartment are generally ostracized, and the clear analogy here to that bare minimum, is the easily attainable bare minimum dps levels set forth by Gevlon.
"Lupius said...
How would you consider the action of boosting alts in the guild? The players themselves are certainly skilled (or we wouldn't be downing Sarth+3D) but their alts are simply undergeared."
Strictly from personal experience, a well-fitting emotional analogy is that boosting someone's alt is like helping out someone who is bright but very young, one's child or maybe a friend's child, or much younger sibling/nephew etc. In wow of course the "maturation" process is vastly sped up, the all blue healer alt may two weeks later be the fully epic'd healer alt that makes a valuable contribution to the raid when some regular healers are absent. Other than the differing rates of time, the analogy is quite fitting.
"In this case, I'm boosting non-M&S. Are you gonna tell me that having alts is pointless and inefficient to begin with?"
If your guild is downing sarth 3d, I don't think his post was really aimed at you. If a guild is struggling to down bosses because it's carrying too many M+S, the issue of gearing alts isn't really germane. If it's not struggling to down bosses because it's not carrying M+S, than it's not in the domain of his post. Either way, not an issue.
A few less specific observations on the topic:
1) Why publicly call out the M+S, rather than just disassociate from them in private life? I.e., why make it "personal"?
People who ask this fail to understand how pernicious the danger of M+S truly is. The instant that independent entities form into a society, the danger of moochers who share in the rewards without assuming the risks of enterprise as a individual/reproductive strategy becomes one of the top evolutionary threats to the whole.
Vastly oversimplifying, why aren't women attracted to the guy who is "too nice"? The alpha male is the one who looks out for the good of the group, which includes helping the injured, and booting the M+S right out of the society. Look at the fundamental tendency to "scapegoat", to isolate some individual or social group as the cause of the larger society's problems. Sure, today that tendency is easily exploitable by politicians, but it arose as a means of overcoming preexisting social bonds to accomplish the goal of booting out the M+S, when tough times hit. To fully support this thesis would take thousands of words, but there's plenty of literature out there if anyone is interested. To answer the original question in one sentence: people have a natural tendency to improve the society they are in, and not to leave or start a new one at the first sign of difficulty, due to evolutionary genetics, and this process includes calling out M+S.
2) I would like everyone to consider the situation in which someone who spends 30 minutes a day of unscheduled time playing the AH, is commonly accused of spending too much time making money, since there's no point in having that much money--but when he constructs a mathematical argument to show that spending 30 hours a week of strictly scheduled raiding time is similarly unnecessary, not to convince anyone else to stop but merely to justify his own behavior in regards to his own raiding goals of seeing all the content, he is accused of being as bad a failure as someone who can't outdps the tank. Hello?!?!? That's so outrageous that I had to construct a sentence with 2 independent clauses and 4 dependent clauses to express it, and I was holding back.
Seriously though, to really put yourself in each other's shoes, you have to imagine the raiders' justifications for their commitment level, and imagine if Gevlon were justifying 30 hours a week of AH playtime, strictly scheduled like a second job. If he asked Sydera, "How would you feel about being adequate, but lowest among the WoW millionaires, all of whom have good skills?" If he asked Stabs, "What if the other AH lords dc'd or quit, and you had to carry the entire economy by yourself?" If he asked Daniel "Why settle for good enough, when you could be the richest person on the server, by a factor of 10?"
Even if I had unlimited hours per week through some wormhole effect, there are a whole bunch of things I wouldn't spend 30 hours a week on, let alone the actual situation where I'm hard capped at 168.
Is there any value placed on friendship and camaraderie
I would say yes. I think the key then would be to place a value on that and then determine if it is more then what you are paying (in gold for wipes and more importantly time.) when you wipe because of sub par players/gear.
Kurt's comment is really interesting.
Sydera would say: I'm already happily average at making money. Which was essentially Gevlon's answer.
I think the reason this blog rubs many raiders the wrong way comes down to tone. Tone is certainly the thing that makes me angry about the blog--it's certainly not the content, which is after all just one person's opinion, and one I actually enjoy thinking about even when I don't agree.
Here's the problem with the tone. Gevlon doesn't critique politely. He doesn't practice constructive criticism. He insults. Terms like "M&S" are something you wouldn't see me call casual players whose skills aren't the best, just as "useless" is something I'd never call a 20-hour per week raider, even if their playtime seemed excessive to me. If he said the exact same things in the kind of tone that most bloggers use--which I would categorize as neutral--I might even be inclined to agree more often. Respect is a mutual thing. Gevlon's comments would be less angry, I think, if he were to take on a more respectful tone towards other players of the game.
Kurt said...
"You are missing the point. Letting leechers ruin your raid and gearing them as a reward for doing so demonstrates a LACK of social skills. Possessing social skills would imply that said possessor would construct/belong to a functioning society. A raid with leechers is a dysfunctional society, perhaps a real world analogy will help."
I am not missing the point. I agree that allowing sub par people in a raid is a bad idea. And I don't let these people in my raid.
However, that isn't the point here. I've been following Gevlons blog for long enough now to see that his views on the uselessness of social skills go far beyond booting friends from raids that are sub par performers. In fact he constantly reiterates how social skills have no value.
Comments like:
"I learned that social people value social connections above real things in real life and content-things in WoW."
He is basically saying that he values seeing wow content, or in game gold more then social skills. He is saying that he values making money or gaining status in real life is more valuable then social skills. Now.. the latter I will cut him some slack, as there are some decent arguments for it.....but the former... please. Wow gold is nothing. It is not real. It has no value, not even an intangible one. Social skills.. the ability to work with others, not be disruptive, etc, are more valuable then fake imaginary gold.
Gevlon demonstrates a huge lack of logic, even for a goblin. A True goblin understands the value of social skills. As said goblin can use said social skills to better himself, his status, and his fortune.
Even in business, people would rather deal with a socially skilled person then an jerk.
It seems to me that Gevlon tries to hype the importance of other skills and belittle the importance of social skills simply because he lacks the latter.
I could be wrong with my assessment of Gevlon... and if I am I challenge him to explain why he thinks social skills are useless when there is ample evidence in both wow and the real world as to the value, both tangible and intangible of social function.
You know, this isnt about social skills, its about the fact that if you want to kill bosses you need people that have enough skill to down them.
That mean people that actually try to down them, instead of sitting idle and let othersdo all the job.
On the other hand, i dont want to kill myself to be on top of the meters, if i am in the top and doing my job, fine, if i am not in the top but still in or over the minimal neccesary, then fine.
Social guilds are fine, but a guild only social, without actually working to a goal in the game, either raiding, pvping, even a RP society its just a glorificated chat room and a fancy name over your head.
Sorry to tell you this, but theres need to be a goal in a game that isnt "meet new people" and for reaching that goals you need to educate people that want to learn and get rid of those who just want a free ride.
The leechers ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS. In the second you top boosting them they will backstab you. Period. And i dont need people sucking up for boosting in a game (i got enough of those in RL).
Anonymous , the author of comment #15--You are indeed missing the point, by conflating "social connections" with "social skills". They are not the same thing. Then, to compound your error, you give a definition for social skills which equates to social subservience, and then make a baseless claim about him saying they have no value, when the quote doesn't show him saying anything whatsoever has no value, let alone saying something he never talked about has no value. I could go on, but really, there's no hope here of ever reaching any kind of accord, or even reaching the point where we're both talking about the same thing.
Sydera- I see why you would adopt that attitude, but personally, were I to undertake the quixotic task of attacking the cherished illusions of the masses, I imagine I'd be prone to slipping into the exact same tone. Hence, the existence of satire, right? All the other blogs I've seen are about pew pew'ing the most deeps, or predicting the next nerf/buff in the endless patch cycle, not really a fair comparison.
Kurt said...
"Anonymous , the author of comment #15--You are indeed missing the point, by conflating "social connections" with "social skills". They are not the same thing. Then, to compound your error, you give a definition for social skills which equates to social subservience, and then make a baseless claim about him saying they have no value, when the quote doesn't show him saying anything whatsoever has no value, let alone saying something he never talked about has no value. I could go on, but really, there's no hope here of ever reaching any kind of accord, or even reaching the point where we're both talking about the same thing."
Dear Kurt:
Social Skills (the abilities to interact with others in a pleasant matter) build social connections. So while the two are not the same thing, they are indeed intimately related. Social connections are ONE of the valuables that come from having good social skills.
And never did I say good social skills equate to social subservience. I didn't even hint as such a thing. So you seem to be the one missing the point.. or just fabricating them out of thin air.
As for the quote...yes, it wasn't a strong one...however, it was simply the most succinct thing to sum up his attitude, rather then quoting his entire blog post. Taken in context with the rest of that post, and the rest of his posts it demonstrates that he has a lack of understanding and appreciation for social skills or any sort.
Read his posts about "the beer game", or about why he wrote this blog as "a way to get revenge on friendly helpful people." Or some of his earlier posts on why people who practice social skills are useless both in wow and in the real world.
Or don't... it's all up to you.
Dear Kurt:
I think you misunderstand both the word "quixotic" and the word "satire."
Don Quijote was a total nut, but if he were a Warcraft player, he'd be the one boosting "M&S" and then feeling sad when they didn't thank him. His stated purpose was to right social "wrongs" even if people didn't want or need his help. In one famous episode, Quijote frees a bunch of galeotes (prisoners who are sentenced to row in the king's galleys as punishment for their crimes--16th c. equivalent to M&S) and then is surprised when they beat him up and steal his stuff. Gevlon's very, very sane. If anything, it's me--and the other "helpful" bloggers-- who are tilting at windmills.
The purpose of satire, on the other hand, has always been to critique the powerful. Satire attacks the rich, the government, organized religion--the power structures of society. There's no point in a satire about "M&S" players. They're the underclass already--nothing gained, nothing changed from kicking them. Satire is about making people question the social order. Some of Gevlon's comments about the ridiculousness of raiders are what borders on satire.
So, if your problem is with the "social" people boosting the so-called M&S, and you try to make the point that the M&S are being leeches on purpose, doesn't that sort of negate the M(oron) part?
They may not be good WoW players, but that doesn't automatically make them morons.
Sydera:
I've read Don Quixote, as it happens. I can't imagine him boosting M+S... in fact that's the way the majority of players go through this game these days. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't play WoW at all, but if he did, he'd be doing something really crazy, like convincing people who wanted to raid not to join guilds. :P
As regards satire: "The purpose of satire, on the other hand, has always been to critique the powerful."... No. "Satire is about making people question the social order."...Much closer. I would challenge you to propose any segment of society, any type of social interaction, which has not been the target of a famous satirist. "They're the underclass already--nothing gained, nothing changed from kicking them." The purpose of satire is not to kick them, it's to make the reader question, in the hope of improving society. Granted, it's harder to think of examples of satire on the poor, but that's more because satire on the rich, or satire on the middle class, is obviously satire, there's no alternative way to look at it. In contrast, if someone writes satirically about the poor, it's hard to tell if it's satire, or if he's just scapegoating, as I discussed earlier. Especially in America, where the depoliticization of the national consciousness has resulted in a society where a movie like Idiocracy seems more like a satire on the middle class than on the lower class. Huck Finn, the quintessential American novel, arguably contains more satire aimed at the lower class than at the upper class, but because of our current-day prejudices, as well as the empathy we are intended to feel for most of the lower class representatives, it seems more aimed at the upper class. Also, if you read classical Satire, either the Roman inventors of the genre or the famous European practitioners like Montaigne and Voltaire, you find many targets in the lower class, poked fun at for the habits which help maintain their place. In modern day America, where the propaganda machine blaming the poor for their condition and praising the wealthy for their munificence has been cranked to a level hitherto undreamed of, propped up by scientific research into the very mechanisms of its workings--is it really surprising that satire of the poor has lost its edge?
In any event, I never said I would write satires about M+S, I implied that people write satires because writing straight critiques of the foibles of the masses is depressing. Apply it to this blog, you have satires about the relationships in raids and guilds between the leaders and the M+S...we're back to Huck Finn in Azeroth, right?
I think that, in this specific post/comment thread, perhaps M+S is not really correct. The Ms are those knuckleheads standing in the fire, standing in front of bosses, stealing aggro unnecessarily, dying from falling, etc. The Ss are those asking for boosting, begging for money in cap cities, and, yes, freeriding on raids. You are correct that these freeriders are not stupid, just lazy.
I really can't believe people are arguing about this stuff like there is new insight to be made here. Look, a near perfect analogy for this kind of thing already exists in the real world, and we can mine it for our answers here.
What is the analogy? Amateur sports, such as recreational sports leagues.
There are serious leagues where people try to win and do their best, and where you can't just invite a friend to play on the team. That person has to know how to play.
There are also more casual leagues, where people don't care so much about winning. The better players "boost" the lesser skilled ones through some victories. But mostly people don't care so much, because they don't have that much tied up in winning (equivalent to loot). As long as people get along socially within the group, major deviation of skill level is perfectly acceptable. The idea is that the social interaction among the teammates is so rewarding that it largely ranks higher than winning, though winning is still desirable.
Now even in casual leagues, if it appears someone is simply not trying, or is so bad that it becomes frustrating, that person may be booted, so there are degrees, but you get the idea, and I think it is a pretty good analogy.
So there, I hope that answers it for everyone.
I feel the same way, but I made a different decision. As a member of a small social (useless) guild, I decided to retain the guild for the social aspects, since they're people that I knew in college and still like to talk to. When it comes to raiding, however, I'm totally PUG now.
The catalyst? The guild's other hunter (who is one of the few who isn't a RL friend), who, MONTHS after hitting 80, is still not even hitcapped. After I spent hours and gold getting "good enough" he can't even figure out how to get enough +hit to not miss. And guess who gets invited to raids, and equal loot footing?
So I conveniently "miss" our guild's raids. When the need a solid DPS later on, I'll be locked to a PUG raid that cleared the entirety of Naxx in the time it took them to do Spider+Plague.
Enjoy your boosting; I'll enjoy success.
It is a very close analogy Geoffrey, but I'm not sure it is helpful. Why not? Well, take a look at your one disclaimer: "Now even in casual leagues, if it appears someone is simply not trying, or is so bad that it becomes frustrating, that person may be booted,..."
So the issue, is how to tell if someone is so bad that it becomes frustrating. In sports, you tell that just by looking at them. In WoW, figuring out whether someone is so bad that it's frustrating, is exactly what every column about M+S has been about, right? Well, partially about figuring out, and partially about how to convince people that don't understand what makes an M+S, what makes one.
See, I've played a lot of sports, and when someone is that bad, everyone knows it. The guy when everyone groans when he shows up, or when he's picked for your team... it's just obvious. But in WoW, I'm in a casual guild raiding 1-2 days a week now with some RL friends, after being in a hardcore guild for some years. So the M+S are immediately obvious to me, but not really obvious to anyone else apparently. The fully epic'd out ele shaman getting outdps'd by the mage in full blues and dying to every flame wave? You'd think at least that one would be obvious. What it is I think, is that the average raider there only has room for 2 bad players in his mind, and 2 good players, and everyone else falls into a morass in the middle, whereas I pretty quickly rated everyone along a long continuum.
Well, that was a long explanation of how the analogy doesn't apply in a certain way, but I'm not convinced it's all that relevant here. I suspect it may just be that nearly everyone who argues that it's always better to raid with friends in a casual guild, no matter how bad they are, isn't into competitive sports either.
One closing observation... purely anecdotal evidence from my playing time---of the failures in bad raiding guilds I've seen, kept for their "social skills", about 20% were just idiots, 20% didn't care to try, and 60% had old computers and never saw the fire they were standing in.
@ Kurt: I actually am a Quijote scholar, and I regularly teach the book at my university. I'd love to have you in my class.
Many different things have been read into the Quijote. It's a very ambiguous work. I'll tell you, though, that you've fallen into the idea that Quijote is a hero who always knows what the "right" thing to do is. Many people agree with you!
But I will say that Quijote also does a lot of useless things. Among others he:
1. "saves" Andrés from a beating, but with an attitude that encourages Andrés' employer to beat him even more severely once Quijote is out of sight.
2. "liberates" a statue of the Virgin Mary from the friars who are carrying it in a procession.
3. "assists" the puppets in a puppet show battle between Christians and Moors--ruining both groups of puppets, Christians and Moors, in the process.
4. "frees" a group of dangerous criminals, who then turn on him.
You could call him the heroic booster of M&S. You can read into Quijote what you like--it's one of the great things about the work, that Quijote's madness gives him carte blanche to say and do anything at all, and as such one episode will seem to contradict another. But one thing that is for sure is that Quijote isn't competent at anything. Nothing. Even reading is a dangerous activity when he does it! Occasionally he is able to give a "sane" philosophical pronouncement, but his behavior is all locuras and disaparates (varieties of craziness).
You're definitely inspiring me to read it again, I think I read an abridged version actually, which still clocked in at 400ish pages, but that's all that used book store offered me.
Not sure why you think "I'll tell you, though, that you've fallen into the idea that Quijote is a hero who always knows what the "right" thing to do is", from the fact that I said "I'm pretty sure he wouldn't play WoW at all, but if he did, he'd be doing something really crazy, like convincing people who wanted to raid not to join guilds.", and "But in WoW, I'm in a casual guild raiding 1-2 days a week now with some RL friends, after being in a hardcore guild for some years." ;)
I think guilds are a royal pain, and also the only reason to play WoW longterm-- like many worthwhile things in life, you have to take the good with the bad, because they are two sides of a coin, where you can never really remember which side is which.
@Kurt
"It is a very close analogy Geoffrey, but I'm not sure it is helpful."
I think his analogy was perfectly understandable. He was basically saying that just as you may have different "leagues" with different objectives, you will have different guilds with different objectives. Would a more competitive player play in a league where the final score doesn't matter? Likely not. Would a less competitive player play in a league where winning is everything? Likely not. I think you tried to read way too much into his comment for lord only knows what reason.
I do not enjoy competitive sports and am not competitive in-game where DPS/loot/etc are concerned, but I would rather play with a raiding guild/alliance. So there goes that theory. Raiding guilds actually remove competition I find as their loot structures mean you either have the points for the item or you don't. I never feel "beaten" when I lose an item and I don't worry about the roll. Also, I like to actually see the content, so for me that is a reward within itself.
But, could you imagine playing volleyball with a social team who didn't care about the score? Who had to take a bio break every few minutes? Who had to have a cookie or other "buff" before every serve? Or after each score, they get a new toy (i.e. loot) that they have to play with a bit before they can continue?? The game may never end! I think these fit more into "not trying" in raids than does dps or any perception of effort.
In ANY game, your evaluation of effort exerted and the reality will differ. The shammy you referred to may have been trying actually, but maybe he doesn't realize he is not so great. It happens. To me, the volleyball examples above are far more annoying.
But regardless of perceived "effort", if you want your pug, guild, etc made up of players with X dps, then you have the right to /kick if you so choose. Just as a league would have the right to kick a player if they did not meet their minimum standards which may be just to show up or may be to have one basket/goal/etc per game.
And that was the initial point. That each guild's standards will be different. Some will be higher and some will be lower, but the player still needs to meet the minimum standards or risked being kicked.
@Sydera:
I've never read Don Quixoti but I might have to pick it up now!
"
I think his analogy was perfectly understandable."
Me too, just like I said, in fact I went farther and said it was very close. However, close does not necessarily imply useful. Any object A is the perfectly close analogy for itself, however a tautology is not a useful analogy, because it adds no new information. The true test of its usefulness is whether it convinces people, something that I can't speak to since I was already convinced.
"I do not enjoy competitive sports and am not competitive in-game where DPS/loot/etc are concerned, but I would rather play with a raiding guild/alliance. So there goes that theory."
My 'hunch' breaks down logically to For all A, not B. Your statement breaks down into "I am not A, and not B". These statements are logically independent of each other, so not your example isn't relevant, not that one exception disproves a generic hunch in any case.
"In ANY game, your evaluation of effort exerted and the reality will differ. The shammy you referred to may have been trying actually, but maybe he doesn't realize he is not so great. It happens. To me, the volleyball examples above are far more annoying."
He probably just has a bad computer, but we'll never kill sarth + 3d with 5 ppl who perform at that level. That is the issue under discussion here, Gevlon is trying to say that instead of eventually breaking up and reforming a new more hardcore guild, it's easier and better just to kick a few people who can't perform, or remove them from the raiding roster, etc. I don't see the sports analogy as helpful here, for the reasons I stated in my previous post, for the fact that less talented subs are more useful in practice and for short periods in sports than they are for raiding, and because people seem to get less emotional and are more realistic about the level of their sports performance than they are about WoW performance. Perhaps your sports experience is just much different than mine-- you indicate you don't play sports possibly? I play a lot more sports than I play WoW these days, 20 pounds > 200 dps any day of the week. :P
It probably would have been more productive to replace my entire last post with: His analogy was 90% right, he was wondering why people were talking about it still, and it's mainly because of that other 10%. Your post is basically about that 90% which everyone agrees with already, so let's agree to agree?
I don't think he's calling low-skill players who don't bother anybody M&S. I think he's calling the ones who try to get into raids M&S because if you don't avoid them, they suck away your time and ruin your chances of success. There's 3 types of "casual" players: high-skill casual players who are competent raiders but spend a lot of time doing other things such as roleplaying and organizing scavenger hunts, low-ambition casual players who mind their own business and spend their time farming and doing outdoor questy stuff, and the M&S casual players who try to get into your raids and make you miserable while you carry them on your back and try to tolerate their stupidity, AFK, mistakes, etc.
@Kurt
You really deeply need to believe you are 100% right it seems.
Just because you do not find a person's ideas or comments "relevant" does not mean they are not relevant to anyone. It just means they are not to YOU.
Just because he didn't expound to the degree that you do in your comments doesn't mean his thoughts were irrelevant either. It means you went to way to much trouble to try and explain your theories and disprove a total strangers. Seriously.
"It means you went to way to much trouble to try and explain your theories and disprove a total strangers. Seriously."
You went to too little trouble, or you would have seen I said I 90% agreed with him. I'll disprove you all night long though baby, I love to write. Could you tell?
"Just because you do not find a person's ideas or comments "relevant" does not mean they are not relevant to anyone. It just means they are not to YOU."
So your reply to hundreds of words of close reasoning is "according to YOU!" ? I'll keep that in mind for next time, maybe prepare a retort. How about "No, YOU!". Hmm, that doesn't seem to work, let me get back to you on this.
"You really deeply need to believe you are 100% right it seems."
Yea, all those maybes, probablys, not necessarily, strictly from personal experience, etc. that I was using... SMOKE SCREEN! You caught me though, I'll stop pretending to have an open mind, that's so 19th century anyways. I'M THE DECIDER! LIFEBLOOM SHALL BE NERFED! OH FRABJOUS DAY! Man this is great, thinking is so overrated.
The slacker is doing no injustice, since they are persuading people to give them free stuff. They are being both clever and just.
The booster is doing no injustice, since it's their stuff to give. They are being dumb and just.
So, no one is doing any injustice. Not only that, but the M&S is both clever and efficient.
You are putting all this work into trying to change the booster. It will never work and is just a waste of time. From an effort-reward perspective, it's a waste of resources.
M&S don't change the boosters. They just exploit them. Their strategy is more efficient.
You seem to be a smart guy, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I think you just don't realize that what you want exists, but it's more rare than the two extreme examples you have provided (guilds with M&S issues and top end guilds).
Have you really given up on looking for what you want?
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