Greedy Goblin

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Ninja raid

The weirdest thing happened Wednesday in the guild. The farm raid was scheduled with lot of people signing up. When I came online, I found that someone created a raid. Later it was revealed that he created a personal event in the calendar, inviting many people (not me of course) and then spammed LFM. Many people later stated that they thought he is just inviting for the farm raid, while I was offline. He also singed up on the official raid just to be sure.

People just wanted to raid and joined, they couldn't care less the background. The guild does not have the manpower for 2x10 yet. The result: my raid killed Halfus and did some tries at Valiona between 19:30 (we had to wait until more people came online) and 20:50, when people had to leave and no replacements were available. His raid killed Halfus and wiped on Valiona between 18:55 and 22:40. No need to say that we use to one-two shot Halfus, Valiona, Magmaw, Omnitron and kill or seriously try on the fifth on Wednesday in 3 hours. But yesterday there were no replacements to rotate people who fit to that boss.

I hope that those who did not leave his raid after they figured out what's going on, learned the hard way that such thing does not pay. The organization of raids, the replacements are done for maximum effectiveness. If you are doing good, you kill bosses fast. If you do not fit to some of the bosses, it's better to be outside doing something else (something fun maybe? or something "productive"?) instead of wiping pointlessly because your DPS is low or the encounter is designed for more melee or ranged or feral druids with multi-million rip. Cataclysm is "bring the role, not the player".

Of course anyone can make raids in The PuG using the calendar properly, making guild events. Then we would have one raid. I don't mind if someone else leads it, I gladly just heal. Strike that, I don't even mind if I'm not in it, everyone who read Undergeared must know that I'm the least of a gear freak. I want progression, gear is just a tool and I can't care less if I wear it or someone else in the raid. If he would have organized his raid openly, I would most probably just signed up for it.

It's pointless to ponder over his motivation. While my obvious guess was that he is just a disruptive troll to be kicked (how many guilds would tolerate if someone would secretly organizing a raid during official times, inviting everyone but the guildmaster and some officers?!) but people proved that what he did is "clever use of guild mechanics" that shall be hotfixed instead of punished. Note: I don't think now he meant to be disruptive. He just thought he can do better than me, not noticing that not "my skills" kill bosses, but the player rotations, which he obviously given up when he formed a fixed raid.

So little fix to the rules: you shall make all raids fully public guild events. Fully public events allow people to plan. No one shall worry that there is a secret raid where he is not invited. Raid leaders can still not invite anyone, but must do it openly and expected to give a proper reason. I always do, if I'm unable to (because I have to choose between good players), I ask them to /roll.

Alternatively, you can join and organize /trade pugs without using any guild resource (calendar, guild chat). Note: using /casual was always forbidden for serious things as it would force people to read the chit-chat to not miss out on serious stuff.

You can make spontaneous raids for Argoloth, old bosses or even "is anyone here who missed the raids and not killed Halfus?". Theoretically you can make "hey I'm bored, let's kill Cho'gall" raid too, but that's just stupid and anyone with an ounce of brain will wait for an organized raid. Oh wait, if you can find 9 people who have nothing better to do than pointlessly wipe, be my guest.

While this part is obviously abusable (I wouldn't be surprised at all if at 18:50 today someone would "spontaneously" make a raid), I hope 3 hours were enough for Valiona to explain even the most stubborn people that joining such raids is a bad idea. Current tier raids needs preparation, consumables and selecting the roster. I guess this part was exactly that made people stay in the ninja-raid: they felt safe from being replaced. Again: what is better? Being replaced from Valiona (because you are a tank) and being invited back to Omnitron 20 minutes later or wiping on Valiona for 3 hours?

Unfortunately one of the members of the ninja-raid couldn't handle the situation, got himself kicked and to the hall of shame too.


PS: and what about the "usurper"? I hope he learned his lesson from Valiona too. When the cake can be significantly enlarged, it's better to cooperate to have part of the big cake, than competing over a single slice. When he started to make progression raids for Chimeron, I set a good example by not doing the same target, going Conclave and Ascended Council instead, exactly to let him reap the rewards of his work. I hope that from now on, he'll show the same respect. Not because he understands the word (from his reactions, he is like I was 10 years ago, an angry anti-social who thought he can have the World alone, simply by being "smart"), but because he is able to understand that competition over unlimited bosses with the limited resources is stupid.

PS2: There is one positive outcome of this. We can have 2 raids or a 25-raid for Halfus and maybe even to Omnitron. Next week I will try to sort out 2 raids for them before merging to do the rest of the farmbosses. Until then: people beware of the possibility of ninja-raids see who does the invites, ask who will lead this raid before you'd blindly jump into a pointless wipefest instead of an easy farmraid.

To clarify it, here is some Q&A about forming raids:
  • Am I able to make my own raids: absolutely yes
  • Do I have to set up a calendar event for it: no
  • Why do we have calendar then? Because our casual nature means that people are online randomly. A raid needs some time for 10 people. If you just come up with the idea to raid in some random time, you won't find people to do so. The people shall make time for their raiding, and it's only possible if they know when there is raiding event.
  • Why do I have to make the raid publicly visible if I'm not intending to invite certain people? Because it makes planning possible for everyone. If X knows he won't be invited, he can make other plans, in-game or out of game. Getting in a raid is not a right and everyone accepted it. However making bad surprises (as opposed to a clear and upfront rejection) to people is not the interest of anyone.
  • The rules say "There are raid times every day from 19:00-23:30 server time with two 10 mins breaks around 20:30 and 22:00." Why? Why can't I raid 16:00? Again, it is because people must make themselves ready. All applicants accepted these times, so there is a good chance that they can make themselves available if they want to. Making current tier raids in random times would mean that people have to log in random times or miss out on their chance. You are expected to make current tier raids in these times. Also, you are expected to wait until the start time even if you are full at 18:50. I won't tolerate a "no-life race" where people want to get spots by getting online earlier and earlier until we start raiding at the morning.
  • The rules say "I (and only I) can give amnesty from this general rule in rare situations". What is it about. It's about helping out a larger group of people in rare and extreme situations like "ISP strike in France, no French players could play until Sunday and they want to kill farmbosses". As I said, it's an "amnesty" and not a "right". You shall raid outside the declared raid times. This rule will may be lifted when we have enough people to be able to fill a raid any time. Again, the rule is to protect people from being forced to come online in "weird" times or lose their chance to raid. Everyone saw the raid times in the rules and accepted them. Let's use these while we have 1-2 raids only.
  • What if more people want to raid than there are spots? Then the raid leader can decide. His decision must be public and explained, so the rejected person can make his own decisions: improve to reach the standards of that raid leader or do other plans.
  • Can I organize a raid when someone else does? Yes, people will choose.
  • Is it smart to do so? If the raids have similar targets, generally no. A lose-lose standoff can happen when neither raid is functional. Cataclysm raids are hard, and the casual nature of the guild makes it's very unlikely that both of you can fill the raids with good people. Most probably you have to fill it with not-ready people, then wipe for hours. You shall use double-booking as a last resort if you find the raid leading of the other person unacceptable.
  • What is the "smart" way to do then? There are lot of empty spots in the calendar. If you respect other people's raid, they will respect yours. You can also discuss, make agreements, especially if your time schedule is different. Like X has a raid from 19:00-20:30, and then he ends it and (with mostly the same people) Y makes his own raid, continuing from the break. Also, you shall include other possible raid leaders to your raid, as they can help you make the raid smooth by giving tips, suggestions, helping to find mistakes.
  • Shall I organize a different kind of raid in the same time? Yes as there is different target audience, even if there are people who would prefer both. People should be able to choose between a progression, a farmraid, and an AQ40 nostalgia raid.
  • Wouldn't it be great if we could have 2-3 raids at the same time? Yes it would. But we usually don't have enough raid ready members online for that. If we find enough online even for double-Halfus and then merge, we can split the raid then.
  • Why do people go to Argoloth in random times? Because it's so easy that it doesn't need preparation. You can easily do it with a trade pug. So do it as you please.

33 comments:

sha said...

@gevlon

What was wrong with his ninja raid outside the horrible failure? It seems from the first few paragraphs you were more disgusted someone would try to snipe a raid in the hope of doing better than you did. If other raiders got hoodwinked, that is their problem and them not leaving is their problem.

I see social whining that you couldn't get the raid you wanted or thought you were promised by the sign ups. "I hope that from now on, he'll show the same respect." He just gave something a try and failed. The disrespect part is he thought he could do better/faster than you. I think you are letting your social out.

You did leave out what happened before he said the bs word. But the "ninja raid" is just a social response to a goblin enterprise of not wasting your time to start a raid.

Gevlon said...

@Sha: the ninja part comes with the shady techniques he used. The problem with a ninja looter is NOT that he takes loot, many raid leaders reserve loot in pugs. The ninja tells a different a loot system and then takes a loot breaking it.

Breaking rules make life unplannable. It's OK to organize a raid in the calendar. I simply make other plans for that evening. But I (and many others) came online with plans to raid and got surprised by his mess.

Aljabra said...

Well, now you sound like yourself, calm, logical and capable of providing solid reasons for your words and actions. Yesterday I was quite afraid you'll break it all by acting before properly thinking, you was really close to that point. I guess, it was working too good for too long so people got relaxed and assumed, that there are no bugs in the system. Good lesson, in any case.

Sum said...

I'm not in your guild and have no idea if I understood this wrong, but I don't understand this bit:

"Again: what is better? Being replaced from Valiona (because you are a tank) and being invited back to Omnitron 20 minutes later or wiping on Valiona for 3 hours?"

My guild clears around 4-5 bosses on the farm raid, and that does not require any player switches. Surely the tanks have offspecs? I'm sure that if I started replacing people after every second boss back and forth my guildies would be making their own raids as well rather than always or 50 % of the time have to sit out a given boss (although of course making a secret raid is just silly, not arguing that point).

Just to clarify, we run with two pally tanks, one has a healing OS, one a dps one. Some of the healers have ranged dps OS's, and thus we can always have what we need for any given boss.

The bosses that require only one tank, Valiona, Magmaw and Atramedes do not have tight berserk timers so it does not matter if your OS tank does a little less dps than the fulltime dps'ers.

Or is it that the tanks do not have offspecs? In that case it's their own fault if they must be replaced; however, getting a replacement dps saved for just 1 or 2 bosses is not a good solution in the long run and I'm not sure why anyone would offer to do that for any other reason than social pressure to help out.

Gevlon said...

@Sum: Why would anyone get saved for 1-2 bosses? For the 70-140 valor points and the 500-2000G pot share.

It's not a high attendance guild, which means no one have reserved spot. You don't have to raid when you don't want to, but you may cannot raid when you want, because 13 others want too.

Also we don't force anyone to gear up an offspec. If he does, his chances to get a spot increase.

Sassaroli said...

Gevlon, (Malucco here), although I fully understand your frustration, you just overreacted yesterday night. You had been "trolled", for sure, why would anyone set up a raid a few minutes before yours, if not to upset you?
I'm afraid you just bit the bait though, and started a drama on the guild chat which could have definitely been avoided by fixing the rules for future events, admitting you have been cleverly tricked.
I hope you just had a bad day, and that I won't have to witness such a reaction again. It would be a shame to see your project fail because of drama.

Ritualst said...

@gevlon

Whole thing about the "ninja raid" is so damn social from your side. Read a few post of yours. You say that someone can ninja-take-over someone elses spot in the raid (by advertising his superb dps or skills), but then when someone makes a raid and thus makes you not to have access to the full resources of the guild .. here the problem starts.

If the situation was so clear as you try to show it. That it was just ninja raid and people joined because they got tricked ... well they would have left the minute you said that it's not the raid you were organizing. If they didn't left it was more than legitimate raid!

When I look at your last few posts you are less and less consistant about the rules you have created and enforce ... and kicking that guy from the guild was very smart move from your side.

You have provoked that guy firt and driven him mad to the point when he started to write supid stuff (I have watched that guy for some time and I can say he was mentaly stable). Then you gKicked him to get rid of competition and maybe independant raid leader that had as much time to play WoW as you, but didn't like all of the rules of your raids.

And you yesterday behaivior was well below standards ... changing rules on the fly, calling out this guy in public, driving him mad and then gkicking him. He was legitimate raid leader (maybe natural leader you were writing about a few posts ago) and he didn't act against the rules. He did nothing wrong. All he did was to not include you in his plans

Shame on you Glotan! You lost a lot in my eyes yesterday. You should have swallowed all of the stuff from yesterday, keep it clean and low and add the new rule to the rule book today preventing events like that in the future. But what you did yesterday was just ... wrong.

Gevlon said...

@rashnu: are you drunk? You sound like someone who is inside the guild, on the other hand you talk nonsense. I did NOT gkicked the ninja-raidleader. I kicked some random punk who kept talking crap.

Also, I answered it already. The "ninja" part came when he created the raid secretly, and tricking people into it. True, many have stayed because of simply false hope "hey we have a raid, we are inside let's clear it and get rewards". But simply them being careless doesn't make a ninja raid legitimate. It was not only unaccessible, but also invisible to lot of people.

Also, rules must be changed on the fly when someone find a loophole. It's called hotfixing. Or do you think saronite bombing LK is OK? Should Blizzard leave it that way?

Organizing raids secretly is a direct violation of the point of The PuG. Your access to raids will no longer be function of skill, but "who do you know who can get your name to the secret list".

@Sassaroli: From today's information I overreacted. However yesterday I wasn't angry, I was simply lost. I did not understand what's going on and had to get information. The whole point of his action was secrecy, if I won't start "drama" I still wouldn't have any idea what just happened.

Ðesolate said...

@gevlon:
Now that I read the whole story I see you don't have to rewrite anything. We discussed this matter some time ago in case of the non-guild-group.
As you pointed out they do not count for the guildrules (active ignorance we'd call it).

One thing should anyway be clear for anyone. Non-guild-groups must not be discussed / announced in Guildchat (to enable active ignorance).
By this it is a violation of the original rules anyway. (excluding any member from a guildactivity is clearly a non-guild-group)

So in this way I see no problem and not even a glimpse of drama.

Of and a little thing there are some achievements that can show the movements ability, you clearly all know from H-DM [Ready for Raiding] There is some more, we use it as the only needed achievement for our raids:
http://www.wowpedia.org/Glutton_for_Fiery_Punishment
http://www.wowpedia.org/Glutton_for_Icy_Punishment
http://www.wowpedia.org/Glutton_for_Shadowy_Punishment

PS: don't forget non-guild-groups are not protected in any way. The Rl may ninja the whole loot and your only way is to set up a ticket. Since you declined the guildrules by joining a non-guild-group no one would care about your misery.
Be smart don't do it without...
...guildrules.

Anonymous said...

You could have kicked the ninja raid leader for violation of the "intent" of your ruleset, even if he didnt violate an existing rule. Sometimes, things are so obvious, that no special rule is made.

Echo said...

Tbh you sound a bit butthurt that you didn't get an invite Gevlon. Also if theres no official agreement to do certain bosses then you can hardly blame him.
From the sounds of it, the player didn't use the proper channel to invite, which is fair enough but I thought the PUG was all about that? I think a lack of clear definition led to this and probably your new hall of shame guy wouldn't have reacted so badly if he hadnt spent almost 4hours wiping.

Ðesolate said...

Aw yes I have to make a short further comment about the general situation yesterday. It's critism about my personal and the behaviour of other guildmember and officers.

We are in "The PuG" for a reason. It is all about having a place where we are safe from M&S and Socials. We all accepted to act mature and at least a bit educated. The Rules are there to secure us. Of course since they are made by human they must be flawed, since every human is. So they must be altered from time to time.

I don't see it necessary in this case but thats my personal thing.

We are not in the PuG to act against Gevlon. To challenge his every agrument nor to challenge the rules he made up. Nor to prevent advancement of the guild rules. If we would have to do anything it should be to support each other, what includes Gevlon.

Nobody will force you to do anything inside the PuG, so nobody forces you not to support it's general idea. I'm a bit sorry for speaking of Gevlon in the third person as he is involved.

Maybe it is just the thing that has to get in everyones mind that you are not our boss, leader, idol or enemy. That you are simply one of "us". As it is in the rules everyone in the PuG is equal.

Sorry for making this a long text and some kind of double comment.

Gevlon said...

@Echo: the problem is not that he did not invite me. The problem is that he was hiding. If he sets up a raid, 15 people coming, 5 must leave and hope to be replaced later and I'm in this 5, that's completely OK. He hid it from me and many others making life unplannable. To make it worse, he did it in the same time as an already announced raid. This is unacceptable.

The reason of the wipes were the same: since the raid was not clearly made, he had to go with whoever he could trick into, instead of the whole playerbase. Some of these players were not ready for raiding.

Cellie said...

as far as i know it could have been done by mistake. i remember when another guild member arranged a raid and since it was his first time he chose the type of raid you need to invite people to but he did invite all level 85s in the guild. it could have been that this guy simply didnt know how to invite more than the people who were online at that point or something similar.

Anonymous said...

If a raid leader is entitled to take who they want to a raid from sign ups then, as a raid leader, it seems sensible to preempt that process at the calendar stage by inviting those you believe will perform strongly in that raid.

Those who are invited then have a free and open choice between which raid and raid leader they believe will bring them the most success.

Kallixta said...

"If a raid leader is entitled to take who they want to a raid from sign ups then, as a raid leader, it seems sensible to preempt"

The Rules say no. The explanation is that the RL must publicly explain why not. This information is then available to others for future decision making. Understanding how a RL explains decisions is lost in the preemption.

I hope you can see there is a difference between a public /roll and someone saying "I did the roll and you lost".

Thossi said...

Just a quick question regarding the raid times:

The "official" raid times are from 19:00, and you've stated that you don't want them to start any sooner than that. Question is, though - would people be allowed to start their raid at a later time? I'm mainly thinking about family folks playing, who might want to begin the raid after they've put their child(ren) to bed and finished whatever chores there are left to do around the home.

Blockfire said...

It sounds like you got firmly goblin'd, which is an attitude that you promote through your rules and your blog. If the raid had been successful for the players in his raid while yours had been a failure, this is nothing different than pushing a competitor out of the AH. That's what it seems like from someone outside and with no vested interest.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, I had (another) close look at the rules as listed on http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/p/thepug.html . You state what the *raid times* are, but you don't actually write down what's the significance of these times. Specifically, nowhere do the rules state that people are not allowed to organise current tier raids outside these times. I see that you expanded on this in the little Q&A on today's post.

Could you please consider updating the rules to actually include a statement about why are you defining the raid times? Also, if you are going to use the term "current tier", please define what you mean by that as well, if you intend to exclude for example Argoloth from it.

Anonymous said...

I think that the "alternative raid leader" actually violated the guild rules with his actions, even under the old rules before Glotan updated them. The old rules just stated this:

"The rules below apply to guild groups (raids, arenas, premades). To be a guild group it has to be formed on the guild chat or by the guild calendar." and
"One can use the "non-guild group" rule to form raids with voice communication or master looter. Of course these cannot be advertised in guild channels and not protected by the rules."
In addition, in the post http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/11/lfm-10-man-raiding-guild.html, Glotan expands on the idea of private (or non-guild) groups, and specifically disallows such groups from being advertised in the guild chat.

The WoW calendar allows only two types of entries: guild events (publically visible to the whole guild) and private events (only visible to those who are invited, and not tied to any guild as such). It should be argued that in the rules, "guild calendar" refers to a calendar entry of the guild event type.

In conclusion, the creator of the alternative raid violated the rules. He created a private event, which is classed as a non-guild group, and proceeded to top it off using guild resources (by typing LFM in guild chat). The raid leader in question should be penalised.

The rules did not strictly speaking need amending, as they already prohibit such behaviour. Clarifying it for the future helps though.

Ðesolate said...

Current tier: Every Boss that gives Valor Points. (Blizz gives this defenition)

"nowhere do the rules state that people are not allowed to organise current tier raids outside these times."
Well it is per defenition of Guild-Group a nonGuild-Group since you have a raid group that does not apply to the guild rules. NonGuild-Groups are allowed, so where has to be any change in the rules?

Any group that does not apply to the guild rules is a nonGuild-Group. At least that is what you get if you read the rules.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: thanks for the idea, both the rules and the Q&A clarified.

@Desolate: obviously (except the term "joke boss" introduced). It was never a problem if someone went with a /trade pug, remember Gimlih who had no problems raiding without us (until he left on his own).

@Second anonymous: I agree, that's why the rules are just clarified and not changed (in spirit). Let's just hope that the problems were misunderstandings and won't happen again.

@Blockfire: not exactly as secret invites put everyone into the dark ("is there a raid", "am I invited", "who shall I know to get invited"), therefore it's common interest to stop this practice. But obviously, a sounding success usually defeats concerns, the winners were never convicted for war crimes.

However the very reason why he had to organize it shadily is that he couldn't compete openly. From that came the consequence that his raid was doomed to fail (even if the magnitude of failure is bigger than what I expected, I believed they will be able to kill 4 and fail on Maloriak and not on oneshot-Val).

@Thossi: of course. 20:30 and 22:00 are valid start times.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, you said: " of course. 20:30 and 22:00 are valid start times."

I understand (not sure if correctly) that if one wanted to book a raid ("official, guild sanctioned raid") outside of those start frames on any given day, one would have to ask for a waiver from you.

In my personal case, and precisely following Thossi's point, would love to be able to set up a casual within our already casual schedule, something like, Friday and Saturday, or Saturday and Sunday, starting at 23:00 server time or something along those lines. The idea would be to serve a specific niche of the casual player base, the late nighters or people in different time zones, potentially attracting even more goblins to the guild.

Would this be possible? How could we go for it? Idea: set it up for some months using the waiver (I say months because some time might be needed before we could reach the necessary player base) and then if it worked, adding those hours to the potentially expected raiding schedule?

Sorry for the wall of text but just curious about it (I left the guild some months ago precisely because the current raid schedules don't fit my available time frame).

PS: Difference between 22:00 and 23:00 for me is huge... 22:00 kid still up, 23:00 kid asleep (or pretending at least).

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: yes. 23:00 (or rather 23:30) so doesn't collide with a 22:00-23:30 raid is typically a niche that hurts anyone. I mean it's unreasonable to believe that people in masses will skip the 19:00 raid, leaving the 19:00 people without raid, so such action would get the waiver.

Andrei said...

@Gevlon "However the very reason why he had to organize it shadily is that he couldn't compete openly."

Why is it he couldn't compete openly? Are you generally against open competition? Your guild rules are not clear on that. Is it your guild structure that inhibits open competition? Is it by design or something that needs to be "hotfixed"? Otherwise it doesn't sound like a true PUG guild full of goblins as you claim.

Anyway my impression that all this debate is around interpretation of the rules. It is your opinion (and some others) against that ninja raid leader opinion. And since you have executive power your opinion wins.

sha said...

@gevlon

You keep bringing up the fact that the raid was sure to be a failure. What if it was a huge success clearing 10/12 in that time frame? How fair in advance does the person have to have the raid up on the calender in order for it to be "an official" guild event?

energybomb said...

ok, I have not logged for 10 days, but here's what I get:

A guy makes a private raid and he invites only certain individuals.
Officers and gevlon are not invited.
Raid time comes, gevlon was late (?) and he started advertising his raid on the guild AND the trade, people thought this was gevlon's raid and join.

Gevlon comes, confused and stuff, asks around, apparently, there is a ninja raid, drama ensures.


IF this is what happened:

a) yes, he DID break the rule about not mixing guild resources for trade pugs.

b) no, I do NOT think what he did deserves a /gkick or even a probation. What he did was goblinistic in many ways. You once wrote a whole post on how to suck players out of other raids. It is unethical and it brings him profit, thus it is all good with me. he didn't do it to "troll" you.

c) this should not happen again.

so, to conclude, the drama was uneccessary and ESPECIALLY drama in the guild chat. (Do I truly need to remind the rule about bring the drama only to whispers?) The guild rules changes were neccessary but that player should not be penalized in any way, shape or form.

My biggest fear os this will start cliques. I do NOT want cliques in the guild as it is the best thing about it. People got angry, get over it.


ps: if you were wondering were I have been, here's a summary:

*a wild pack of work appears*
*Pack of work uses overwhelm*
*overwhelm hits energybomb! It is a critical hit!*
*energybomb dies*
.
.
.

sorry guys, big lag, took 10 days to respawn.

Sean said...

@Andrei:
Why is it he couldn't compete openly? Are you generally against open competition? Your guild rules are not clear on that. Is it your guild structure that inhibits open competition? Is it by design or something that needs to be "hotfixed"? Otherwise it doesn't sound like a true PUG guild full of goblins as you claim.

Anyway my impression that all this debate is around interpretation of the rules. It is your opinion (and some others) against that ninja raid leader opinion. And since you have executive power your opinion wins.


I think what Gevlon means by "can't compete openly" means that if the ninja raid leader organised the raid openly, most of the people would've gone to Gevlon's one instead.

I think the whole crux of the matter is this: Gevlon welcomes competition, but not one done shadily. For example in the real-world, companies cannot compete using false advertising. In the instance of the ninja raid, the participants were tricked into believing that it was the Gevlon raid.

Anonymous said...

@sha

The reason the raid was due to fail was because it was not going to have the resources that the farm raid would have had.

By creating a competing raid at the same time, the usual methodology of swapping people in and out was unable to be achieved. Given that the idea behind The PuG is that someone who isn't up to scratch can be replaced at any time by someone better, if there is no pool of better to replace with, the raid will fail.

This applies to both the ninja raid and the farm raid. Of course, we could just naively assume neither of the raids would need to be replacing people but that isn't the way things work.

Tazar said...

I don't think that raid that does not replace people for bosses have to perform worse. I have about 20 raiders in my guild with 11-14 signed for every raid. What you need for raiding in cataclysm from my point of view is:

2x tank (pref offspec on 1)
3x healer
1x replenishment
2x ranged (minimum)

If you form a raid with this in mind it's just about each personal performace. Is it more optimal to have 4x ranged dps +2x mele on Magmaw ? Yes it is. Still my best Magmaw kill was with only 2 ranged and rogue helping on adds (we even did achievement).

Dàchéng said...

As Energybomb pointed out, the behaviour that you are complaining about is very similar to your behaviour in LF10M VoA25.

In light of this, and your comment

I don't believe in "evil" just in "stupid". No one wakes up one day and say "let's harm someone".

do you now regret how you behaved towards the other VoA25 raid-leader? Do you think you were being evil or just stupid when you harmed him? And how, in the light of the events documented in "Ninja Raid", do you think about the advice you offered in LF10M VoA25:

"feel free to lie about social information like group size, people's opinions and such non-measurable quantities if it serve your interest"

Gevlon said...

@Dacheng: in a non-iterative prisoner game the optimal move is to defect. So on a /trade pug where you will never interact with the same guy again, do anything you can.

In a guild you interact with the same people again and again so cooperation is optimal and a good guildmaster enforces it by banning defection.

Andrei said...

@Azzur I think what Gevlon means by "can't compete openly" means that if the ninja raid leader organised the raid openly, most of the people would've gone to Gevlon's one instead.

I think the whole crux of the matter is this: Gevlon welcomes competition, but not one done shadily. For example in the real-world, companies cannot compete using false advertising. In the instance of the ninja raid, the participants were tricked into believing that it was the Gevlon raid


This is exactly my point - the playing ground is not fair at least is not perceived as such. Therefore the open competition is not possible and upstarts have to resort to secrecy or shady approaches (real-life analogy could be smuggling).

There is one particular problem this debate revealed which is detrimental to the open competition. I'm talking about arbitrary set of guild rules -> arbitrary interpretation of rules -> arbitrary "hotfixing" of rules. No surprise Gevlon is complaining about lack of emerging leaders...