Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Gold bid and progress fights

On Sunday The PuG went to wipe on the Lich King. It was clear to everyone that we won't kill him yet. Still the raid was filled quickly, and people were busy finding out what went wrong (lot of things) on the wipes. From the stage of "wipe on the first infest" we progressed to the firstkill... of a Valkyr Shadowguard.

Why would anyone care for that? Because there is a widespread belief that raid progression needs rewarding and enforcing players to show up on "wipe raids". The enforcing is done via attendance requirement (you must be above 80% or kick/demote), the rewarding is done via DKP that can be earned by being on the fight. When the loot systems are discussed, everyone accepts that the inflation of DKP is bad and there would be a very easy solution: zero-sum DKP, award DKP only when loot is dropped. However they are quick to dismiss it as it's "even worse since doesn't reward presence wipe raids".

The PuG has neither. You can not only be offline during raid times without consequences but you can be online and do something else. Also, our loot system is gold bid (with 1/3 compensation) which gives no rewards for wiping. Strike that, a wipe costs you gold (repair, consumables) while spending the same time making gold increases your chance to get loot later. So we have absolutely nothing that rewards presence on progression raids. Yet, people come.

This seems counter-intuitive and there is a reason why most guilds demand attendance and reward wiping even at the cost of DKP inflation. The "selfish" behavior would be letting others wipe on the boss and join only after everyone else know their job, so they can carry you. However such thinking assumes the existence of "helpful people" who do the wiping part and happy to carry you. That's exactly the difference between an ordinary guild and the goblinish The PuG. Here you can't expect to find such people. So the only way to get the Lich King down is to progress on him yourself. In a "normal" guild there are lot of helpful people who would wipe on the boss and carry "friends" later. Of course these people would burn out, and the leadership must prevent this, or at least compensate them with DKP.

Also, there is a hidden reward in doing progression fights. None of us born with LK strategy, we must learn it. If you mess the fight up in a progression raid, it's not a big deal. Usually there are 3-4 individual fails identified (for example the direct wipe cause was a wrongly tanked spirit killing a healer, but one DPS died already because he did not run to the zombies when plagued, one because healer fail on infest and one guy standing in remorseless winter). On the other hand if everyone else know the fight, you are the only one who wipe the raid and that will cost you 300G/wipe plus you can be replaced for repeated mistakes.

You need laws against parasitic behavior because there are "freindly heplfull ppl" who can be easily abused and you must protect these people from parasitic M&S. However in a group with no such natural born victims, you don't have to bother about parasites. They won't find any hosts so they will either start contributing or leave.


If you want to see this with your own eyes, we are recruiting, so just transfer or roll a lvl 1 or a DK, after reading the rules.

31 comments:

Klepsacovic said...

"So the only way to get the Lich King down is to progress on him yourself." What is causing this? I see no rule that would prevent person A from downing him and then person B joining the next week for a kill which has been figured out by other people.

Your guild might not have 'helpful' people, but it is clearly full of people who are interested in an unusual raiding experience, and take that at the expense of advantages they could get elsewhere, such as loot bias for having shown up on progression nights.

ardoRic said...

"On the other hand if everyone else know the fight, you are the only one who wipe the raid and that will cost you 300G/wipe plus you can be replaced for repeated mistakes."

Is this 300g/wipe a new rule?

Monsieur said...

First of, I like all your projects and I see no reason why you wont get LK down eventually. Even with the blue raid :)

But, of course there's a but, I think the idea of the PUG might be tainted by the fact that the guild is made up of readers from GG. And GG readers joined to prove your point, and some may be motivated by the idea that a LK killing pug will put them above the "socials" that can't pug lk. I mean, obviously it can be be done if people know the fight, friendship is not required to kill him.

What the pug is it seems to me, is a highly motivated casual raiding guild. With a strong common ideology(stupid socials right?) and a vocal and unambiguous leader to guide them.

As a guild, that's great, but as an experiment, i don't know what exactly what you're proving.

AKA Tha Schust said...

@Klepsa - I'd imagine the 300g you have to add to the pot if you were responsible for the wipe is a good deterrent.

Gevlon said...

The 300G for stupid mistake is an old rule in The PuG and makes wonders!

Bobbins said...

@Gevlon
Sorry I can't see the 300g in the rules in the link. I must be blind :). All it says is a warning and repeats will get you kicked from group with no division/share of loot.
Please confirm that I can't see or it is an 'unwritten' rule.

' making stupid mistakes again after the first mistake was told them and their questions answered. Also the RL can remove anyone who has no clue about the fight, as you are expected to read up. There is room for error but not for being clueless. Such removed players get no gold from the pot.'

Gevlon said...

@Bobbins: damn. It was a rule in the Ganking Project and wasn't copied to new rules.

nonameform said...

300g rule is a great idea. Don't get me started about all those times when I felt that I'm dying only because someone else fails and we have to wipe. Eventually I started carrying Argent Lance with me to reduce repair costs by about 15-20%. Unfortunately, in guilds with lots of "friends" and "socials", 300g won't work for a very simple reason - people have life and can't pay 300g cause they were unlucky.

Tobold said...

"On the other hand if everyone else know the fight, you are the only one who wipe the raid (...)" - why is this? Everyone makes mistakes, even if you're an experienced player.

Besides, you may not have helpful people as you define them but you have a lot of motivated people. You may not call them "helpful" but, in the end, you have the same result: the boss is dead (yes, even friendly helpful guilds can kill bosses).

Somebody asked it before but i haven't seen an answer: what exactly are you trying to prove? Or is this just a anti-social guild in which all social behavior must happen by whispers and private channels?

ardoRic said...

So, wipe nights are very profitable for people not making mistakes, or is the raid exempt from this rule if the boss was never killed or something like that?

Gevlon said...

@nonameform: everyone makes mistakes and cause damage to others. So shall compensate.

@ArdoRic: no wipe raids are absent from this rule because many people do mistakes. The rule fines those who singe-handedly wipe the raid by being stupid. In a wipe raid it's pretty hard to wipe alone, as many people make mistakes. Those are raids to learn.

Manuel P said...

Can see an add on in the making:

Simple interface, with the names of all raiders, two options, thumb down or thumb up. After a wipe, all get to vote, the 2 players with most votes get to pay 300 gold each.

I personally have used this approach with people in 25 man, top two making mistakes pay 100 gold each to gbank.

Sjonnar said...

@Manuel: I don't think they're punishing mistakes on all wipes. My understanding is that you only get the 300g penalty if you were the -only- one who fucked up, and then only if you wiped the raid by doing so.

ardoRic said...

"Simple interface, with the names of all raiders, two options, thumb down or thumb up. After a wipe, all get to vote, the 2 players with most votes get to pay 300 gold each."

You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Gevlon: that system strikes me as weird. New people will not want to fill spots for the experienced/established group. Unlike everyone else they won't have the experience and will make the mistakes the experienced group did on their wipe nights (while being exempt from the "noob tax"). Except this time he will have to cough the gold for his mistakes.

Why isn't the new guy given the same leeway on his first attempts as all the other guys were given?

I don't disagree with the 300g fee for mistakes, but I think it should only be used on groups you expect something from the members, not on pugs.

Shintar said...

I think it's a bit early to make claims about how and why your system is superior to others in terms of motivating people to progress. Your guild is new and full of motivated people right now, you'd likely have people interested in participating regardless of loot system and attendance rules. The problems usually start to occur once you've been working on the same raid for several months, some veterans get bored and you start to have turnover. If you're still doing as well in three months it'll be a different matter.

Denethal said...

@Manuel: No, that's only a popularity vote.

The correct way of doing it is done to check logs and by paying attention to what's going on around you.

As for the others debating about the LK procedure.. A LOT of people have done it before us and they have written down tactics on how to do it.

You must keep in mind that we're not running optimal raids, we take whatever we got online that wants to tag along.

This forces us to modify the tactics posted on wowwiki and the likes, so that it fits with our current raid setup.

I've paid 300 gold several times, due to my own stupidity, such as taunting too early or doing other non-smart things. It's a nice way for myself to improve as I now have some deterence against failing.

And I'm certain that many other feel the same way. Especially after having to pay for their mistakes.

Anonymous said...

As I understand it, the 300g punishment is for stupid mistakes that wipe the raid. Like tank healer at Marrowgar letting himself get cleaved to death with inevitable tankdeath afterwards. Or a player not distributing the spore on Festergut to the right place if they should know better.

Tobold said...

"( ...) is for stupid mistakes that wipe the raid (...) "

What wouldn't be a stupid mistake?

Wilson said...

If you are going to have guild rules, and encourage people to join because these rules (you claim) create a unique environment, then you need to post these rules up front. "Oops, it's a rule, I just forgot to tell anyone until now" isn't likely to go over well. So, what penalty will you assess yourself for this mistake?

Unknown said...

Considering the fact that practically all raids can be done with -1 of max cap (i.e. 24/25), couldn't it be feasible for one raid member being the official auditor of raid performance? That is to say, he does nothing but see who stands in the fire or slacks on their jobs?

Manuel P said...

I meant in the context of Gevlon's scenario, "progress" nights and in the pug ... otherwise yes, it just becomes a popularity contest.

But I would be interested to see the results.

Cong said...

Assuming the guild merits players entirely according to their ability, the stupid mistake rule works. It makes decent players money, and encourages bad players to leave (or discourages them from coming in the first place). Lament if you will over any "good player having a bad night" and losing a bunch of money; they are (from a rational viewpoint) proving themselves unreliable. There is a point where the rule doesn't accomplish the above goals effectively because those at a net loss are deemed skilled enough to remain, and their motivation to raid overwhelms their need to save themselves the money. That is the point at which the rule should be abolished, as needless impunity generally causes more problems than it solves.

Anonymous said...

While I don't disagree with anything you've said here I think it's somewhat early to make the sort of broad statements you're making. The PuG is only a few weeks old and likely has a lot of people who are very enthusiastic about a 'new' raiding experience and thus are willing to put in work they otherwise might not. It's quite possible that these people will lose their enthusiasm as time goes by and you don't accomplish immediate miracles or they simply reach a level of gear they're happy with and stop coming. Of course these things might not happen and The PuG could be wildly successful but I feel it's just too early to say it's one or the other yet. Do recall that your ganking project was successful at first too, and ultimately failed.

If you're looking for a metric to call it either a success or a failure then why not use being able to do ICC 25 man heroic? Your guild is open to all and has no restrictions to speak of, so gathering 25 skilled and motivated people, especially with the current buff, shouldn't be all that hard if what you provide is really worthwhile. The hard modes really aren't that much of a big deal in terms of difficulty anymore either. If you can't do this much then perhaps the idea isn't as revolutionary as you imagine, or there simply aren't that many truly goblinish people around in WoW.

On a different note you're forgetting by far the best DKP system to reward attendance and punish leechers, Decaying DKP. Quite simply you choose a value, usually equal to the DKP cost of two or three items, and scale DKP down to that level at the end of every raiding week. The person with the highest DKP at the time gets reduced to the cap and everyone else is reduced by the same percentage, so if the top DKP holder had 150 DKP and the cap was 100, everyone would lose 33% of their current DKP, with values below a certain number, say five, being reduced to zero. Other than that you award DKP only for time spent raiding, not boss kills, and give a penalty for late arrival or leaving without warning rather than a bonus for being early or staying the whole raid. A bonus, either temporary or permanent, for guild first boss kills is also useful, but not strictly part of the system.

Anonymous said...

As a healer/dispeller progressing on heroic Lich King...

If my raids had the 300G/mistake rule, I would refuse to dispel.

I have the most complicated job out of anyone else in the raid. I need to avoid the same hazards as everyone else (Hi, Shadow Trap), heal stupid tank damage, while keeping one eyeball pointed at the raid, so that the dispels go through.

Unlike regular Lich King, you can't stack the entire raid 15 yards from the OT. Because of that, dispelling becomes an order of magnitude more difficult. Sometimes plague has to be daisy chained to the adds. Let's not forget that a single death due to plague, or a lost stack of plague is more likely then not, a wipe.

I would absolutely, categorically, refuse to dispel if I was placed under such scrutiny. Make someone else do.

The 300$/mistake fails to acknowledge that some people have vastly more difficult, or important jobs then others on any particular fight. In contrast, a DPS on that fight 'only' has to worry about pew-pewing the boss, not standing in Shadow Traps, and bringing the plague to the OT. I've played both roles, and tunnel-visioning the boss as DPS is MUCH easier.

You're providing negative incentives for people to perform the most important jobs in a raid. Your system will fall apart when you get to an actually difficult boss (25% regular LK is not difficult). The only people who will want to take responsibility on their hands will be "Friendly helpful people who don't mind paying blood money." And you don't have any of those in your guild, right?

Glue said...

I don't see what everyone is finding so hard to understand! As a former IG member and raiding with Gevlon et al. the 300g was only applied when really necessary ie: someone ran too close to a boss before agreed pull and wiped us all.

I was new to ICC at that time, and so died when I probably shouldn't have, and maybe caused us to wipe with my poor positioning of an Ice block on Cindy but making a mistake while learning something isn't punished. Gevlon himself has already said that. 300g fines are for those people who really deserve them! Think back to your raids and you will be able to think of people who should get a fine, or -DKP or some form of punishment.

@anonymous above who would "refuse to dispell" well yeah that lack of dispelling would be 300g fine worthy if you just bluntly refuse to do it, but then with that mind frame you probably wouldn't we welcome on the raid in the first place. The fine is used when needed, for stupidity, and that stupidity is usually agreed on by the whole raid including the person who did it!

ardoRic said...

Last anonymous' comment reminded me of a video I saw not so long ago.

Sargeta said...

A little off-topic but still about your project:

Is there any Western (North/Central/South America) players in your project? Or that have played on european WoW? Because I wonder if the ping is way too high. If its bearable, I'd surely join your project (or any that would follow it, for that matter).

Playing WoW together with non-M&S has been my dream since I killed my first Defias mob.

Anonymous said...

Must agree with the diapel on lk hm argument. Same with being a hunter on the same fight - seen tanks get one shot during the 0.1 second flight time of tranq shot, this is with the hunter spamming a focus tranq macro through the enrage cast. Even such simple fights as blood council hm if you want to max efficiency you want the people on sphere duty contributing to boss dps - a 300g/mistake rule would have me focussing entirely on the spheres rather than doing 9k+ dps as well as keeping spheres up. A good rule for a pug becomes a hinderance to a proper guild. If someone is always making mistakes they need to be gotten rid of, if they're good players who make the odd mistake it's counter-productive to punish them. Simply restricts people to just doing their role and not contributing more fully.

Sean said...

Contrast Gevlon's:
You need laws against parasitic behavior because there are "freindly heplfull ppl" who can be easily abused and you must protect these people from parasitic M&S

with the Anonymous working on heroic LK-25:
You're providing negative incentives for people to perform the most important jobs in a raid. Your system will fall apart when you get to an actually difficult boss (25% regular LK is not difficult). The only people who will want to take responsibility on their hands will be "Friendly helpful people who don't mind paying blood money." And you don't have any of those in your guild, right?

There is a wide disparity of the argument because whilst Gevlon argues from an M&S background, there are others who have experienced content on the high-end.

As a raider who have progressed to this high-end (8/12 HM ICC25, 10/12 HM ICC10), I believe that loot distribution (unless it's grossly unfair) is not the prime factor in determining attendance. The magic factor is 'success'. Get stuck on a boss for a couple of weeks and you'll find attendance declining no matter what loot system you use.

How does a raid get success? It's very similar to the real-world:
- Recruit the best players.
- Have a good leader who can both motivate and strategise.
- Provide feedback and don't tolerate poor performance.
- Reward fairly.
etc.

Now, I guess the point of interest is whether 'The PuG' raiding system will encourage these kind of leaders and people?

For that, I disagree. I believe the top progression guilds occur because the people in it are motivated by achievement and not loot.

However, 'success' is a very relative term. For Gevlon (and probably most people), it is killing LK on normal. In this case, I believe that 'The PuG' raiding system can work.

Anonymous said...

@anonymous above who would "refuse to dispell" well yeah that lack of dispelling would be 300g fine worthy if you just bluntly refuse to do it

Why should I, be singled out, of all the other healers for a responsibility that can end up costing me 1500g a night?

That role is not easy. This isn't something stupid simple like "Don't stand in fire, son". This is "Do your job, and then some."

Any other healer can do this dispel. Just because I am the best at it doesn't mean I should be volunteered to piss gold into the wind - until I get a lot more practice with it, I'm going to be making mistakes.

Anonymous said...

To add to my previous post...

In any sensible system, reward should be proportional to responsibility.

In the PuG, everyone receives the same reward (4% of the pot).

Yet, in the situation I described, the most capable people in the raid are assigned vastly more responsibility (Penalty money for screwing up on doing extra-difficult jobs) then others - yet they receive the same reward as everyone else.

Ironically enough, that smells like socialism, to me. From each according to his ability, to each equally.