Meet Tsila! He is progressed to 5/12 HC kills, with the guild Pescorus, the server first guild, 8/12 HC, world top 1000. That's great, but there are by definition 1000 other guilds full of equally progressed players, why is he interesting?
Because until recently, Tsila belonged to The PuG. He was frequent in raids and got most of his current epics with us. He was with us on the race to realm first lvl 25, gaining 2735G for his efforts. So is it a standard "we geared him up, we paid him and he betrayed us" post?
Absolutely not. We did not gear him up. He geared himself up by pulling his weight on raids. If he couldn't do it we would have replaced him. The drops were won by gold bid, distributed to everyone in the raid. He got his gold for services he provided to us. I see absolutely no reason why would having him for a short time being a bad trade. He brought us value, more value than he took away. Not because he was a selfless helper, but simply because in a successful cooperation surplus value is created in what we all benefit.
Then why the "we geared him up, we paid him and he betrayed us" is the standard response for gquit? Because of several social delusions:
Because until recently, Tsila belonged to The PuG. He was frequent in raids and got most of his current epics with us. He was with us on the race to realm first lvl 25, gaining 2735G for his efforts. So is it a standard "we geared him up, we paid him and he betrayed us" post?
Absolutely not. We did not gear him up. He geared himself up by pulling his weight on raids. If he couldn't do it we would have replaced him. The drops were won by gold bid, distributed to everyone in the raid. He got his gold for services he provided to us. I see absolutely no reason why would having him for a short time being a bad trade. He brought us value, more value than he took away. Not because he was a selfless helper, but simply because in a successful cooperation surplus value is created in what we all benefit.
Then why the "we geared him up, we paid him and he betrayed us" is the standard response for gquit? Because of several social delusions:
- "We are a group of friends, bound by positive emotions". It's obviously a lie, as you can't be a friend of 100+ people. On the top of that, friendship is interpersonal and not group related. If you enjoyed talking to him, what stops you to continue? Socials actually collect "friends" like achievement points. The more "friends" you have, the more successful you are. Taking away a "friend" generates as much QQ as taking away a stupid title.
- "We r awsom". The socials derive much of their self-esteem from group membership. While even the most delusional social is aware of some of his shortcomings, he compensates by attaching his psychological self to a group: "I am great because I belong to a great group". The leaving person implicitly says "this group is not so great as the one I left for". So he must be hated in order to make his (implicit) opinion irrelevant.
- "We geared him up". Socials believe in helping strongly. They think that the individual progresses only by receiving from a group. So they don't say that "person X is boosted by 9 other raidmembers", but "X gains from the raid". Funnily they uphold the same for every raid members. Everyone is geared up "by the raid", despite they are the raid. This logical fallacy never bothers them. So even X was the best member of the raid, he got everything from the group and now he abandons in!
- Lot of guild use the terrible loot council, and usually the most geared (favored) players trade up. Among socials not returning favor (staying and boost) is "evil".
24 comments:
Actually, the main reason why people think of betrayal, social or otherwise, is because guilds don't normally use the GDKP system - they might allocate loot to core raiders first. As a result, highly geared people are those that have been favoured by the guild/raid leadership.
If people in your guild are talking about betrayal, then they're simply illogical. They're the sort of people who, if Tsila joined the guild and helped carry everyone else to 10/12, then left, they would still feel betrayed.
I forgot loot council, as I considered DKP obvious and did not think about anyone still using that abomination. Added.
No one whines about Tsila in the guild, so it's not a teaching post to guildies but to others.
There's yet another reason, but it's mostly used by asocial guild leaders to keep the social, but good players of the guild in line.
Obviously, no leader likes a good member of their guild leaving. Despite them having provided value up to then, most leaders would prefer if they kept providing value, instead of leaving, since replacing the leaving person requires extra time, money and neurons.
As such, even asocial guildmasters have an incentive in keeping the 'we are a great groop of peeps' illusion precisely to discourage other social, good raiders from leaving.
Thus the 'We have been betrayed' line is a very strong motivational line to keep the status quo of your guild mostly intact.
To this post I can say both yes and no.
Yes your guildmates are not your personal friends. But if you want to have a good progress you need a stable team. Top people leaving is bad news for your progress and people organizing guilds prefer loyal players. Its a logical choice.
Fortunately, Blizzard changed the game setup and gear is not so much problem as it was way back in TBC and Vanilla.
I agree with your attitude towards Tsila it's very sensible.
Out of curiosity and in the interests of debate - Tsila is obviously a good player so if he/she advertised themselves as willing to return to the Pug for the right price how far would you go, in terms of a negotiation,to get them back ?
If for example they asked for an additional 10% of the pot because they were worth it, would you consider it ?
The reason the social guilds are angry and feel betrayed when somebody leaves is because they spend a lot of time boosting new people, giving them unecessary runs throughout their levelling and then gearing them up "to get them ready". So then those people are "ready" and they leave, everybody is angry. The ironic thing is that they helped train this person to be selfish, so why does it surprise them?
They think that the individual progresses only by receiving from a group. So they don't say that "person X is boosted by 9 other raidmembers", but "X gains from the raid". Funnily they uphold the same for every raid members. Everyone is geared up "by the raid", despite they are the raid. This logical fallacy never bothers them. So even X was the best member of the raid, he got everything from the group and now he abandons in!
I'm not quite sure how you arrived at this sort of thinking as being a "fallacy." Fallacy how? It can be considering a stupid system (opinion), but the mechanics involved are otherwise logical and straightforward.
Think about a street gang. It really could just be 10 guys hanging out. The idea of belonging to "a gang" and not simply being 10 guys is an expectation that if someone outside the gang hurts you, the other 9 members will get revenge on your behalf. On an individual level, putting yourself in danger for some other guy you might not even be friends with is just dumb; if everyone believed that though, there would be no point in the gang, which was presumably better than just being 10 individuals with no protection. You become willing to "pay it forward" when it comes to personally sacrificing for other people (even if it is not boosting), in the expectation of getting some future boon yourself. There is also immense pressure to stay within the gang, which keeps the social capital marketplace relatively stable.
If I join a trade chat pug, I'm in it for just me - if someone else gets loot I could have used, I have wasted my time other than VP, as the success of others does not ensure future success for me. Conversely, if a member of a guild group gets loot I could have used, it doesn't bother me because I know that loot will be used to help down future bosses faster/easier and thus I will get another chance later. If that person bails though, not only is he likely to be replaced with someone else that I would have to compete against, whatever social capital, e.g. tit-for-tat, I built up is gone. Hence, feelings like betrayal, but probably more like feeling like you got swindled in a bad deal (your car was a lemon, etc).
A fully GDKP-centric guild doesn't have to worry about "paying it forward" since you usually get paid right away, but that does not mean other systems operate under fallacious assumptions.
The quite obvious reason, why social guilds don't use GDKP loot distribution, is because such system is 'socially unfair'.
It favours the 'no life AH campers', the mean elitists, who bothered to pick dual gathering, while leveling and did not leave 20-30k worth of mats near the road and so on.
And of course it 'forces people to buy gold for real world money'.
First off, the guild name is Pescorus, without r in the beginning.
Chowes, while your question was not towards me, my druid is still in The Pug. I'd likely raid on it if there was no raid for my rogue to join.
As for gold, its more of a means to good than good in itself. Like money, you only need as much as you can sensibly use, and a bit more to keep up the Quality of life in case the income stopped.
Tsila
The problem is reliability. If you have a good group, your odds of success are good. If a player leaves, the odds of getting a replacement that's just as good adds an element of risk to the next raid. Time is money, and you don't want to waste it having a new guy learn the team dynamic.
Relate this to high turnover at the workplace. A reliable employee leaves for a better job. Hurrah, by all means... but when your job relies on him, you now have to teach the team dynamic to a new guy. That brings in a transitional phase, and that's an unlikeable speed bump.
I forgot loot council, as I considered DKP obvious and did not think about anyone still using that abomination.
"Surprisingly", most of the guilds in the higher echelon of progression have nothing to do with DKP and Loot Council is prevalent.
Average/bad guilds use it because they consider it a "fair" system, however, fairness has nothing to do whatsoever with progress.
"Average/bad guilds use it because they consider it a "fair" system, however, fairness has nothing to do whatsoever with progress."
We had the discussion about what system to use instead the DKP before Cataclysm launch. Surprisingly many players considered Loot Council as a "fair system". Fortunately older players had enough imagination about how many "emo" problems it could cause. The best players have often immature behavior in this area. So we are now using EPGP and as a raid leader I really love it. No discussions, no bidding, just click and distribute. And my head is free from solving players complains about who deserves what.
Jana: The main reason social guilds don't use GDKP is that they don't need to. They already use social ties as the bond/ incentive that keeps people coming to raids.
And for the main post, I agree with you. Some guild leaders are ridiculously possessive of their guild members even when there is no raiding or loot involved at all.
"One of our features is not being bothered by anyone trading up."
If he had left for a less progressed guild, would that have gotten people's knickers in a twist?
@Azuriel: still the other gang MEMBERS and not the "gang" that helps you.
@Last anonymous: trading DOWN? Why would anyone do that?
@Gevlon
I don't understand why you sound incredulous, since you had a post last year about a guy leaving the PuG for a less progressed guild after killing Arthas. So obviously it does happen.
"trading DOWN? Why would anyone do that?"
Actually, there was such a case before on this blog, it was about a char named Inuyisha or so, he left "the PUG" for some "social" guild, because he liked to be social.
From a-social people's point of view he "traded down", from his point of view, he chose something he wanted more.
No one was offended by his choice I reckon.
I am the only RL that does not gives a flying fuck about a raid member leaving to wherever place they want?
Actually the only thing that pisses me off is when they leave and dont say anything, and that is only because I will have to look for a replacement in a hurry and that means less raid time, wich is something I enjoy, not the epixx or whatever.
I have had guildies and some of those were in MY raid group that left, they traded up, others down, no one cared, the ones that bothered to say "hey guys, going to gquit and join "????", then best wishes all and GL, return anytime you want and all that. The others were just GL and best wishes.
@Anon 18:10
You reckon wrong.
From this post:
"Many people expressed their anger over his leaving, after all we gave them KS title and that's how he thank for it?!"
As a businessman, you should know that an experienced employee is nearly always better than a new, unproven one.
So there's also a
5) We're now weaker as a team, and it may be a struggle finding a good replacement.
If I'm a competitor of that employee, and he won a raise or a better office or promotion over me, then leaves the company?
Yeah, I'm going to resent that a bit.
But I'm mature and I'm not going to create drama because that might hurt my chances for future advancement.
If I'm 19 and playing a video game? You might see some drama.
Trust me, anyone that thinks that most of the upper-tier guilds use loot council is mistaken. I'd say that probably 95% of the top 200 guilds use some sort of DKP system.
In regards to the post, it's a breath of fresh air to see someone else think this way.
@ Bristal: "If I'm a competitor of that employee, and he won a raise or a better office or promotion over me, then leaves the company?
Yeah, I'm going to resent that a bit."
You're hopelessly irrational. If someone has a better office and promotions over you leaves, that opens up a space for you to take their place. If you want that office, then step up and earn it, just like they did!
If they received a bonus payment and left, then they've worked hard to get that bonus payment over the previous year, and you should have no resentment when they do leave.
When someone leaves, it's purely a business relationship. Any resentment over their leaving is either social or irrational.
I'm surprised that commenters wonder why Gevlon would waste so much time with his M&S screenshot.
Gevlon writes a blog. He needs M&S screenshots to prove his points. He even noted a few months ago that he needs them but nobody is sending them anymore.
Does anyone wonder why only he seems to have these inane conversations with social/M&S?
But rarely, if ever, do we see any screenshots from anyone else but him.
IMO, Hipponize seems to be the real a-social. He could care less what anyone else thinks. He wants in a raid and he's gonna get it without pleasing anyone.
Without his ulterior motive, Gevlon would have asked him how much he wanted to raid, and what it was worth to him.
Agreed wholeheartedly, Bristal.
As Gevlon often points out, correctly, socials are guided by what he calls "ape subroutines", which, really, are nothing but adaptations that'll keep you surviving in a pack. Those aren't worthless, or they would not have survived natural selection. We usually adapt large organisations to harness these things rather than trying to do away with them.
Ironically, my own social "subroutines" would keep me from being like Hipponize. I would feel shame, and I would have 0% chance of getting into Gevlon's raid - because knowing my sub-enrage dps, I would never even ask. Like a true asocial, Hipponize does not let himself be bound by shame. He just increased his odds over me, the social, to say, 5-10%.
Three cheers for Hipponize the Goblin.
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