Greedy Goblin

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Tol barad walktrough

The amount of sheer stupidity in Tol Barad really annoys me. It annoys exactly because it has nothing to do with pressing buttons. Tol Barad gives exactly what Tobold is missing: meaningful choices instead of just bashing buttons fast enough. And the situation Tol Barad is the exact reason why game developers are moving towards the "guitar hero" design: given meaningful choices, large majority of the playerbase make a wrong choice because they either lack the mental capacity or the will to use the existing mental capacity.

The mistakes in Tol Barad has nothing to do with being new. The only WoW-related knowledge needed is the basic map knowledge:
  • there are 3 bases, you shall capture them as attacker, prevent capture as defender
  • you are capturing by having larger numbers in the base than the enemy
  • after 2 bases are captured by the attacker, they get a multiplier to numbers capturing the last
  • sieges are able to destroy towers which give attackers time, but can't harm players
Knowing these would allow every intelligent person, even with 0 WoW knowledge to figure out what to do. Of course without WoW knowledge and some gear they would fail to complete these actions, but they would know what they should do. The player who is attacking a siege in a base or PvP-ing on the road is not bad WoW player, but a dumb person.

As I mentioned, most of the mistakes are made not by being stupid, but by choosing not to think. This is mostly because playing bad gives instant gratification (pwning is fun lol), while playing properly gives only delayed gratification (victory screen, honor points, access to dailies and BH). This guide is written to point out and explain every "fun" mistake in Tol Barad, motivating players to start to use their head.
  1. The main ability of sieges is "CC moron". A siege has 1M HP. A PvP geared and talented, unbuffed player against an un-debuffed siege can't do more than 10K sustained DPS, but 8K is more likely. So the siege keeps him busy for 2 minutes. Driving the siege to the tower takes 30 seconds max. Worst case you wasted this 30 secs, but got 5 minutes to the team when the tower is destroyed, so there is never a reason to not drive a siege to a standing tower. Best case several dumb players are kept at the tower. You are just running back and forth carrying sieges, they are destroying them, your team is missing you, their team is missing 3-4 people. So the first rule of Tol Barad is: if you are an attacker and see an unused siege, drive it up a standing tower. If the related tower is down, drive it to an attacked base or to the road junction at the enemy GY, hoping some moron jumps on it.
  2. From the above it should be obvious, but I write it down just to be sure. Don't attack sieges! Ever. No exceptions. If you are so much better players, crushing the attackers, and want to win in 15 mins, then simply don't die so no enemies are promoted, they can't drive sieges.
  3. Bases are captured by players standing within their walls. This gives the obvious rule for both teams: fight inside! The only exceptions are driving sieges, travelling from the graveyard to the base or switching bases. "Driving sieges" can include driving a siege into a bunch of enemies and making them dismount and kill it. "I can keep 2 enemies busy outside alone" is not an exception from this rule! If you are a blood DK and you can really keep 2 retarded DDs in combat in the middle of the nowhere, you could actually keep the same retards busy in a base too. If they are dumb enough to fight you on the road, they will target you in the base too if you charge them.
  4. If you are smashing the enemy, you are doing it wrong! The above three rules are only violated by utter morons. From #4 even normally intelligent players are making mistakes, simply because playing properly is "not fun". If you are outnumbering the enemies at the first base, they are outnumbering you at the others. While you are winning here easily, they are winning at the other two. As attacker it's bad because you need 3 bases, as defender it's bad because if attackers get 2 bases, you are likely going down.
  5. Move before they wipe! While #4 sounds reasonable, in practice it needs you to leave the battle before the base is captured and the enemy is wiped. You look around, you see more green than red, you turn back, leave combat, mount up, go to another base. Yes, that means to leave the "fun" of killing that last bear and prot paladin to the lolkids who can't think. Remember, the alternative of leaving them is being one of them.
  6. If you are being smashed, you are doing perfectly. Being graveyard camped is the worst thing in PvP, the sign of total defeat... in Warsong Gulch. Here it means that a bunch of morons are being busy ganking you at one base leaving their team clearly outnumbered at the other 2 bases. Soon this one will be their only base. The worst thing one could do is "this base is lost", mount up on the elevated GY and ride away. If no one is left, the dumb gankers get bored and leave too attacking other bases. Kite them, annoy them, use defensive CDs. Fight at the base until reinforcements arrive.
  7. You should go where the enemy will be, not where they are, and especially not where they are neither! You just captured WV, see ICG captured and Slag in enemy hands. Where do you go? If your answer is "staying at WV", you are wasting some time in 80% of cases, win the match in 20%. If your answer is "zerg slag fast", you are useless in 100% of the cases. The defenders who spawn in the middle will most likely zerg ICG or return to WV (if they have a good leader or a skilled team). Slag will be taken without you. Save ICG, move to the defense! This is totally counter-intuitive. The enemy is at Slag, why should you go to ICG where they are obviously not? Because they will be there.
  8. The flag isn't pretty, interesting or giving rewards! You are holding a base. You can be defender or attacker but anyway you own a base and want it to stay that way. Where are you exactly? At the flag, in the direct line of sight of the enemy to allow melee charge at you, ranged shoot from max distance, healers heal them out of your reach? Have you ever heard the term "LoS"? Do you think that the pillars in the arenas are merely for aesthetics? There is a lovely ramp in Slag, you can be below it. In ICG you can be behind the northbound building, in WV you can be on the south part of the top of the building. So many possibilities, all better than standing around the flag like sheeps waiting for the butcher.
  9. Even the flag is prettier than the door! There is worse than standing around the flag. It's standing at the front door as attacker or the GY side door as defender. Let the enemy attack you even faster, possibly from his own GY, right? This mistake is made by the lack of impulse control: they come from there, so let's engage them faster! I'd rather win.
  10. No, we don't have the win quest on Monday! The /raid channel is for organizing the team, and not for begging for the quest. Go to the base camp before the battle yourself you lazy little punk! No, you shall also not look for group for Baradin Hold since we don't have the place yet!
  11. Finally, the hardest to keep rule: if you are weaker than the average player in your side, and not a healer, don't queue up! The battle has a strictly 1:1 queue system. So if you get in, either an extra enemy also gets in or (if there are no more enemies in the queue or TB is full) someone on our side doesn't get in. Who will be this guy is random. A random person is average person on the long run. So by queuing up you either unleash an average skilled/geared enemy or lock out an average skilled/geared ally. If you are below average in skill and gear this make our team weaker. Of course you're sure that you are above average, so let me give some numerical barriers: 2K resilience or 1500 arena rating. If you are below that and you aren't a healer, queuing up make us weaker, not stronger. Run a random BG and enjoy BH and the dailies instead of just lose TB "4 fun"!
I think this list, especially the last explains why games don't give meaningful choices: doing anything right and doing it a fun way are mutually exclusive. This allows fun only to hopeless morons who don't even know that they are terrible, and people who focus on the big picture and good in delaying gratification. For everyone else any activity is "for no lifers" and "boring". With other words: it's a saying that "gamers optimize the fun out of gaming", but actually it's just the surface. The truth behind it is "the ability to optimize the fun out is necessary to do it right".

That's why modern games are designed in a way that you are on a rail. Liberated from the responsibilities of choice people are allowed to enjoy the ride and have immediate fun doing tiny technical moves right and watching big numbers flashing on the screen.


Being realm first lvl 25 brings you lot of applicants. Sometimes you wish it didn't:

34 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know this isn't relevant to the post except for possibly the part about the moron but I have some questions about how to become a non-social player.

I am no moron and I know how to play the game relatively well but for some reason gear is addicting - it is a competition that I don't want to be a part of. I am wearing 365 arena bracers because I know it makes my ilvl go up a few points despite the fact that I have better ones. When another player gets a kill on a boss that I could have been a part of (e.g. benched for a raid) I cannot help but to be jealous. It isn't that I dont realize how insignificant it is that he got the kill 1 week before I did but for some reason I see my boss kills as a comparison tool against others.

How can one break the social norms of the M&S and enjoy playing the game for its own sake regardless of what others are doing?

Kenny said...

Surely, surely that Britneyfears is a reader of your blog who is trolling you. It just seems too perfectly your 'social' stereotype to be true.

Then again, stereotypes get created for a reason...

Anonymous said...

The multiplier for having 2 bases and the reason for always driving a siege to a tower should be spammed early in the battle. Fighting on the road has no place at all anymore, not even for slowing defenders down because of the multiplier and people should be informed of that in my opinion.

As for the moron it's almost impossible to believe people are this stupid/defensive when they didn't even follow the first rule...read them. I'm almost surprised you don't actively aim them towards guilds you want to overflow in morons...seems somewhat practical.

Perdissa said...

britneyfears completely freaked me out. I would never. Ever. Court such a fearsome enemy. Now each time I log on I will cringe in fear that he will troll my guild on trade chat, one of the most respected channels in the game.

Oh wait.

Gevlon said...

@First anonymous: it's a long road. At first I'd suggest to keep that PvP bracer in the bank except for PvP.

And use ONLY the basic griphon and horse (windrider and wolf) as mounts.

Andru said...

@ Gevlon

Using basic Gryphon and horse wastes utility. He should use the Headless Horseman mount or the sparkle pony or Invincible for the utility of having a single mount for both flying and ground.

I'd rather not clutter my bars with two mounts when one is enough.

Grim said...

@First anon
You can't "become" asocial. You either are, or you are not. Most people are not and its a good thing.

As long as you make sure that you are not a M or S and respect other people enough, not to spam them about nonsense that they probably don't care about, You pretty much fit the PuG, while still being a social person.

As for what Gevlon said - using the better bracer is part of not being a moron and thus not really an asocial move per se. Using the basic mounts is borderline hipster.

I spent all wrath riding the basic wolf in BGs just to be different. Since most people had all sorts of bears, raptors and whatnot, I actually stood out from the crowd that way.

Andru said...

Also, about meaningful choices.

WoW has those, but all meaningful choices are made in preparation, and not in execution.


*Choosing the right guild for you? - meaningful choice
*Choosing the right combination of UI tools for your role - meaningful choice
*Choosing the right gear/gems/spec for your role AND guild AND capability. - meaningful choice.

There's plenty more, but Tobold seems to not understand a thing.

In my opinion, in any game, when you're presented with two choices, you can choose the one with the better outcome, or one with the worse outcome. (Getting back to the nuances later a bit.)

If you have to pause and think and choose the better choice, then I suppose that is 'meaningful'. But not everyone is the same. Some people are better than other. Some have studied previous choices and can make this current choice based on previous experience.

While for a layman, choosing such a choice is 'meaningful', for an expert, such a choice might become obvious and trivial, much like playing the correct note in Guitar Hero.

Increasing the randomness of the outcome may perhaps instill a false sense of meaningfulness, but that, too, is restricted. Statistically, in the long run, the outcome is the same. Either the randomness completely makes the choice irelevant (in which case it makes the choice meaningless), or statistically, a choice will still be better than the other, in which case the choice will still be meaningless.

Getting back a bit. One can, I suppose, argue that a choice might be better in the short run, but worse in the long run. This is only false complexity. An expert can accurately predict for how long the 'run' might go, and then choose the best strategy thus. A layman might think he has a 'meaningful choice' ahead, but an expert will not.

And if for some reason, long run is completely unpredictable, no one is stopping a person from making short-run best choices and string them together, rather than gamble on a longshot.

Sure, another could argue that a choice now can give you an advantage in a place, but cost you in other. Again, false complexity. An advanced enough player can tally the usefulness of the current resources, and the usefulness of the future resources, and thus see if the tradeoff will be worth it.


All this 'meaningful choice' chatter loses its luster once the rules of the game are sufficiently well known to predict outcomes. In order to keep making meaningful choices, a person has to remain uneducated, which is hardly a desireable way of playing the game.

The game is actually learning the game, not playing the game.

Gevlon said...

@Grim: yes you can be. Just like you can heal (or at least become dry) from alcoholism or OCD you can stop being social. It's about small steps: "I'm not gonna impress any peer today".

Anonymous said...

@Andru
http://www.wowwiki.com/Mount_macros

Azuriel said...

I don't think it is always that the people in TB are morons, I think it usually comes down to the fact that most TBs are lead by whomever randomly zoned in first, there are dozens of people shouting conflicting orders, and enough people are doing random things that you are unlikely to actually impact the outcome of the battle in a meaningful way. Surely you have played in some AV games, yes? One rogue or small group or whatever recapping flags can change the tide of the fight, but no amount of orders will stop Alliance from wiping on a heavily turtled Galv, even if you warn them ahead of time.

Run a random BG and enjoy BH and the dailies instead of just lose TB "4 fun"!

A TB loss is still worth ~87 honor, which is way more than you would get in even a random daily BG loss. This does not count the honor gains from towers going down. Winning is more, obviously, but I do not think you could ever convince anyone not to queue for even a guaranteed loss.

Unknown said...

@Andru

You can macro all environment mounts in one slot:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Mount_macros

Ihodael said...

"u made a bad enemy tbh mate"
"and i dont mean that as a threat i just know it to be a fact"

Thankful that he was not 12 years old...

This reminded me of a story I once heard: "My brother is a GM, he will ban you from the game". Proper reply: "My brother is God, he will ban you from life" (paraphrasing).

Grim said...

@Gevlon
The ape "subroutines" that You love so much (I'm not really sure what the hell is a subroutine supposed to be, outside of programming, so I'm just guessing what you mean by that) ensure that most people are social by design.
Since we as a species ruled out natural selection and created a well structured society, asocial people can exist, but at least for now they are a minority - a glitch in the system.

One can no more become asocial by own choice than one can decide not to like cake. If you like cake, you can force yourself to not eat it, but you will still like it. Sure, one might like cake at some point in his life and then stop liking it later, but it would take some serious treatment to stop liking cake on demand.

The alcoholism analogy, while twisted as all fuck, is kind of right - most hardcore alcoholics have a genetic predisposition towards addictions and can become dry, but are never able to drink in moderation. They are basically still alcoholics, they just force themselves not to drink.
Acting social is a hell of a lot more pleasant than pretending not to be social if one actually is.

Smitty said...

Your strategy might fit with the target to win TB. But don't expect everyone fighting in TB to want to win. Personally I am tageting to get the archievments with hundreds of thousand of kills. And for this purpose TB is ideal, because of the masses of opponents. And I like the battle as long as possible. My strategy is not to avoid endless zergs just to help somewhere else. No, I try to predict where the zergs with a lot of opponents and even more of my faction are or will be. I don't need honor points or TB batches - I am capped.

Maybe there are some other reasons/archievments to play TB (and destroy tanks). A personal target could be to prevent the big-brain-opponents to reach the flag :). CC them and getting them down while they are mounted in the middle of the road.

Don't tell me you are playing but don't want "fun". Don't tell me that you spend money and a lot of time for a game without expecting fun. Fun in terms of reaching targets. Don't expect everyones taget matching exactly with your tagets (especially don't expect everyone to support YOU to reach YOUR targets). Targets or expectations might be more or less "social", but are different from player to player.

You cannot claim yourself not to be social while playing a MMOG and acting in a community with a lot of other players. Acting in a community or with other human beings is a social activity. There are different possibilities e.g. acting like a samaritan or acting like an asshole. Most of your activities influence other players (chat, blocking the mailbox, standing in the fire, underbid the AH ...). I assume, that your taget in this social game is getting reputation being a leeading person in "goblinism" or organizing raids/TB (in former times WG). To reach this you spend a lot of time and gold (it seems to be a contradiction to the "goblinism"). An other way to get reputation from other players could be "the more social" way to boost/"help" other players. It might take less gold, less time and you would earn reputation from the whole guild being a "nice" guild leader and open for otherones problems ;)

One point I can't follow is your effort (at least in terms of gold) to get archivements (boosting more than guild level 24) without any advantage. This seams to be very "social" in your definition and not really desirable for a goblin.

Anonymous said...

If you're not careful, britneyfears may taunt you a SECOND TIME.

Gevlon said...

@Grim: actually it's not hard to stop liking cake. If you choose to live healthy, soon your brain will build associations that connect cake with obesity, unhealthiness, repulsiveness. Then you will actually find cake disgusting. Consider the idea of eating greasy, fatty food. Disgusting right? A century ago it was considered delicious. We conditioned ourselves to find it repulsive.

The same way a "gz lol" is now instantly bashed by guildies who connected this social kindness with "stupid player" and refuse it that way.

Brain programming is a wonderful thing.

Mojambo said...

I'm new to Tol Barad. Basically there's no way to stop the attackers from destroying the towers, when they got the siege weapons?

If that is the case, I think it's a shame. AFAIK you could defend towers in Wintergrasp.

Anonymous said...

"That's why modern games are designed in a way that you are on a rail. Liberated from the responsibilities of choice people are allowed to enjoy the ride and have immediate fun doing tiny technical moves right and watching big numbers flashing on the screen."

Minecraft. That's all I have to say.

If by 'modern games' you mean 'triple A games', I mostly agree with you, with the caveat that linearity is preferred by major studios as much for fiscal efficiency as for creating a uniform difficulty curve.

Grim said...

@Gevlon
Yes, that's why diets are so good at making people skinny - they just eat salad instead of cake and soon enough, they don't like cake anymore.

Oh wait, none of what I just wrote is true.

The brain can make connections, but is really shit at breaking them. To stop liking cake, one would have to create a new connection "cake - gross" that would be stronger than the already established "cake - awesome".
This is way harder than just looking at some obese people eating cake. After all, one has eaten cake all his life and it has been great. Its really hard to top that.

gzlol spam is just like any spam and people (including social people) have been hating it for years, so its hardly a new development for members of The PuG.

My main point is - the longer a behavioral pattern has been in effect, the stronger it is and thus harder to change. Being social is a very basic thing to socials, that they have lived with all their lives. Its pretty much their modus operandi. Not something that can be changed within days or even months.

Inquisitor said...

I think your estimates of the 'average player' are off.

Certaily, I hit 2k resi and 1500 arena rating fairly accurately, and I go through 80-85% of the people I meet in TB as though they are... well... PvE geared, and without a decent command of survival cooldowns.

Since my faction doesn't reliably dominate TB, I can only assume that my own side is similarly bad, and thus that I am pulling the average up.

(Of course, if I'm queuing solo into a large match, I'll go as my PvE geared/specced healer setup, because it does much more good. But for very small matches, or if I'm joining with my arena partner (who's a better healer, most especially at PvP), I frequently run as a source of peels for him, and because we're cooperating on vent, and vaguely practiced, which acts as a force multiplier (and good practice)...)

Inquisitor said...

Mojambo: You can prevent it, but doing so should, in theory, cost you more people from your defence than it costs them from their attack.

Since an offence victory (against a good defence) is only possible due to the functional numeric advantage the GY positions give, you do not want to be exaggerating that advantage.

Personally, I think that in a 'random' TB, that you are mostly winning, but that is swingy, there has to be a point where the reduced chance of 'random' loss from the match going on longer is worth the slight disadvantage you present by killing the siege, but the math would need some big assumptions, and there would still be many 'wrong' times to try it.

Either way, you'd swap in your PvE gear, and ought to do more DPS than Gevlon estimates.

Certainly, the sieges are lovely distractions with which to spearhead flag assaults. You can eat an amazing amount of damage and CCs by sticking one at the front of a rush.

Ðesolate said...

@TB: don't have a real reason to join TB since I reached full epic PvP gear. Okay yes I could get the pets and mounts for honor / tb marks...

...no thanks I don't want to be annoyed by TB anymore. I would rejoin in the Pug guildgroups for further analyse of the elite group in random problem but that's all.

@Moron: Yes they act like this also in germany. "you made a bad enemy..." We can be happy that our reputation is in the hands on nameless scum who can't even communicate in a educated manner...
...have a nice afternoon.

Grim said...

@Everyone who mentioned the bad enemy thing

Maybe he just meant that he is bad at being an enemy.

Blockfire said...

Gevlon, so instead of "gz lol" in your guild chat you have a bunch of "asocials" who are waiting to pounce and bash them instead of offering what I personally consider a less than meaningful congrats. It's no different than a guild full of "gz lol" only instead u have negative nancy's when the norm is the opposite.

Whatever said...

You forgot to mention super-quick resurrection from death.

This would completely confuse a non WoW player. For that matter, it is probably why many "fighting on road" are making that mistake. If resurrection wasn't super-fast, KILLING THE ENEMY works.

Sacristy said...

@Blockfire no, achievements are completely ignored. However if someone did say 'gz lol' people in guild would ask refer him to rules. If he broke rules again he'd be removed. Noone waits to pounce, achievements are simply ignore.

Anonymous said...

If I can fight on the road and tie up 5 enemies solo (frost mage) then that seems much better than trying to kill 5 enemies inside the bases where their numbers actually matter.

Remember that the people fighting on the road are fighting against other players and these other players are also not doing anything useful. So long as the number of players being attacked is greater than the number of players attacking, it's a net gain for the side that's attacking on the road.

Anonymous said...

That was a useful guide. I always maintain if PvP and BGs were more popular or important to Blizzard there would be far more useful guides like this.

(I do not often PvP ) isn't all DPS wasted in the first few minutes of TB? Is it that big of a waste to attack siege engines (or even /dance) during the first part of TB? My amateur observations is that the victory conditions apply at the end. If I kill 0 or 16 people in the first five minutes, aren't they respawned by the time the game is decided? I.e. attacking a siege in the last two minutes is wasted, but is that big a waste in the opening minutes?

Anonymous said...

@Andru I think you miss the idea of meaningful choices. If I play 1000 hours over the next year, I might spend a couple of hours on your asterisk items. 997 hours where I feel my decisions do not matter is grinding and/or a boring job; it is not fun.

Examples of illusion of choice are things like instant pyro! or fire on the ground. Essentially 100% of the time you want to launch the pyro or move out of the fire.

Meaningful choice examples from healing: there are 3 heals, quick, big or efficient and usually an instant and at least a HOT. So I could do two quicks, or one big/slow, or spam the efficient heals ... The quick inefficient heal is sometimes the best answer and sometimes it is not. Whereas moving out of fire is essentially always the best answer.

Anonymous said...

I really do only what I enjoy in this game. I have little to no sense of aesthetics in real life, but somehow, in WoW, I enjoy the sight of the fully T2 Vicious-geared Female Tauren Hunter I play. It looks intimidating, and even if I didn't PvP for the sole purpose of that gear, I love it.

Since the character is a Tauren and is already initially pretty large, and had leftover rep from BC (pretty awesome trinket for grinding) she's using Nether Rays. They fit well with the Female Tauren, and make the character look that much larger.

I don't think anyone really looks at other people's characters. The day I'll engage in activities to impress other people is the day I'll lose faith in myself.

I like the Hunter I'm playing, and I'll probably keep enjoying it for a long time to come, regardless of all the "lol why tauren lol" bullshit I'm getting fed often enough.

I remember rolling this Hunter pre-BC and thinking "War Stomp is so sick of a racial". To this day, I still don't regret at all. That racial single-handedly made the difference between a victory and a loss in a few Arena matches. Nothing like stunning the Warrior and Death Knight training your healer for 2 seconds, then following up with an Ice Trap that procs Entrapment.

After PvPing for all the time I've played WoW (and PvEing for a small part of it), I can safely say PvPers have less of a "social" attachment to their peers. They have personal goals, and it feels as if we only mutually agree to use each other so long as our team composition works well enough on average.

There are no hard feelings when a team breaks up, and only the self-accomplishment feeling when you win a match.

Least that's how it is for me.

As for Tol Barad, whenever I end up in there, I simply lock down 6-7 idiots midfield. I pull them away from the bases, to the towers, kiting with traps and all the stupidly awesome tricks Hunters have.

Bones, the Rabbit said...

@Grim

A better analogy would be how many people become vegetarian after seeing animal abuse and how many meat plants function.

The simple fact is, certain behaviors have negative associations, and usually folks are just ignorant to them. Revelation can change the definition of an act from something positive into something negative quite easily. Sure, said people might always like meat, but most of them will like their 'idea of meat' more than reality of the meat they choose not to consume.

All one needs to do to become asocial is to look at their behavior in a logical manner, and ask "What purpose does this serve, exactly?". If the answer is negative, and the action itself isn't enjoyable, then why would anyone in their right mind ever make such a choice? Generally though, because of ignorance, the answer becomes positive. Logic and knowledge puts the truth into perspective, changes association, and thus, alters the act.

Another reason why the cake analogy is poor is because liking cake, and stressing over social crap isn't the same. No one likes the latter, but many do it because they ignorantly believe it serves some sort of meaningful purpose, or lacks consequence. Both of these are not the case. When faced with the realization that saying "gz lol" actually does nothing, and most likely makes people dislike you, then doing it is no longer enjoyable.

People don't like behaving like socials, they like the false kinship it invokes because they're ignorant to its superficiality. Cake is good. Being a baddie in an instance and having competent players not want to invite you isn't so much.

Andru said...

@ Next to last Anonymous.

If there was a mathematical function mapping exactly when a small heal would be best, and when the big one would be best, you'd be a fool to not follow said function.

Thus, the meaningful choices will not be exactly meaningful. Of course, there is no such function, and you're left to appreciate what healing is needed on your own. This is a case of incomplete knowledge.


Hmm. Ok here another example. Chess. In chess, the vast majority of moves are meaningful choices for humans. However, if a person knows a lot of chess theory, his choices become drastically limited.

While a begginer might think that opening the game with moving a pawn on the H file might be a good idea, and he made a meaningful choice when moving it, an expert would know that it is an absolutely poor opening move, and for him, moving a pawn on the H file would be akin to choosing to stand in the fire.

Chess is incredibly complex, and humans, at any level of play, can make meaningful choices. However, Deep Blue has an analysis algorithm that's more powerful than the vast majority of humans.

Thus, if a person would be able to cheat, and somehow link Deep Blue to their brain, suddenly they'd find that there will be no more meaningful choices when playing chess. Since the algorithm is superior to their skill, not following it wouldn't be a meaningful choice, it would be a stupid choice.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the last @Andru

Healing is not "incomplete knowledge"; Poker with an unmarked deck has incomplete knowledge; there is nothing unknown to a healbot user. Unsolved is not unknown.

It doesn't matter whether there are two or dozens of meaningful choices, the point is that there are choices and some are not always (or never) optimal. Whereas not moving out of fire is (almost) never the best decision. (quiet you cauterize mages)

There are poker games where there are at most 3 choices: fold, call, bet/raise yet those are very meaningful - or at least expensive - choices.