Greedy Goblin

Friday, July 15, 2011

Diversification

One of the best players in the guild has clearly expressed his disagreement with my policy to try to bring everyone to a few farm bosses, getting them experience and loot. Of course those who underperform and make the kill impossible are replaced. His logic is simple: the most effective way of getting experience and loot if we are present in as many kills as possible (that's obvious), and also to go with as good team as possible. It of course leads to the fixed roster guild.

What's wrong with that? I mean if it's effective, it should be preferred. It does not mean really fixed roster as if one of the top 10 team is not present, the #11 will get spot. However such system is not safe. Since they never get spot, the people under #15 will leave. Who cares? As long as the other 15 shows up with proper attendance, nobody. But as soon as they go away for any reason, either because cutting back on WoW or for trading up, I will stand there with no replacement or only very casuals.

The system where everyone gets a chance (as opposed to boost), is more safe, as up to #30-40 we have raiders with OK gear and experience. I can raid any time I want, without ever fearing to go dry without help. Also, bringing people who are less geared means bigger competition for loot, higher pot. It was a bit annoying when 378 BIS items were sold for 500G minbid.

While efficiency favors elitism, safety is inclusive with everyone useful. The financial crisis did (or if I look at Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, will) teach everyone the importance of safety. Then capitalism will be much more humane then it was a decade ago. Of course, inclusiveness applies only to useful people, those who are able to pull enough weight, even if less than us.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Alternatively, ten other players could roll a second raid team. And unless these players are far worse players, it's actually going to benefit the progress of everybody.

If you've got 20 players that want to raid one evening, but not enough for 25, someone's gonna have to start a second group.

Squishalot said...

Other note - why are you /roll'ing for raid spots, and not gold bidding?

kuon said...

The main problem is who makes the call on who the top 10 players are.

This process of identifying the top players is a social process that has no place in an asocial guild.

Gevlons system of allowing everyone to participate and then kicking an nonperformer is much fairer that any method of pre-deciding who the top 10 are.

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: who gets the gold if we bid for spots?

If the raiders do, they pay nothing as whatever they bid they get back. If everyone in the guild gets it, it motivates people to bid without even wanting to come, just to generate gold for himself.

Anonymous said...

Or to use the proper buzzwords: You have to add sustainability to your goals. Teach people.

The same goes true with out economy, if only the MBAs would realize that...

Anonymous said...

In the last posts, it sounds like you have the same problems, that the most raids get and quite funny, often you choose the same option, than most raidleaders do.

Especially in this case, it would be really interesting how much fluctuation you have.
Do you have any Data about the raids and how often every player attended?

I like your idea pretty much. But (and of course thats not your target) you never will perform equall to a attandance raid.

Considering you get as skilled players as every other attandance raid. You have several points, why you will perform worse.

1. Because of the rotation and much less attandance, every player has less expierence with the bosses. Even less raid practise.

2. Having no fixed people for different boss mechanics means many tactic changes. So people not only have to learn a single part of the boss, they have to learn much more. It's again more learning time and even weeks later, you could encounter a wipefest, because a new player on a keyposition is learning.

3. Gear is distributed among much more players.


I hope you will stay close to your idea of a PUG. Look at your data and if you always invite the same players, to progress faster.

Sean said...

Diversification is a pretty interesting topic. Actually, in my opinion, a 10-man raid team should have around 12-13 members for this. Anymore, I feel that it will dilute the raid too much and affect progression.

I disagree the problems in those European countries are because of safety. In my opinion, the Greece debt is because the citizens of that country want to get carried, thus the govt needs to borrow to finance that. Now they've reached the stage where the debt has spiraled out of control.

Sacristy said...

My objections to the roster system are that it actually weakens the raid. If we assume that over a certain level of player ability every boss has a 100% kill ratio and that at certain boss difficulties some wipes will occur and at even harder difficulties 100% will occur -The boss is simply unkillable to the raid.

For the sake of simplicity I'll use only tanks but a similar situation applies throughout the raid members. On the first day of raiding we get 4 tanks that show up, using /roll as we do we will usually end up with 1 tank over our average of availiable tanks and 1 tank under. Throughout the raid this system gives us a slightly weaker than optimal raid team, but still a strong team as our best players are on equal footing with our worst players(same /roll chance to get in).

Now this above team will begin the weekly raiding on the easiest bosses of the week, as all the easiest bosses are at the start of the raid dungeon this raid easily clears the first boss.

You than replace players with replacements who are available for the next boss saying 'You've already killed one boss so I'll replace you with new guy'

Assuming all the players from earlier waited around for a raid spot then new guy would be made up of 50% above average and 50% below average. However boss mechanics and players from earlier logging out instead of waiting means we do not replace the entire raid, just some members.

The new team is either stronger or weaker than the first one depending if you replaced at top half or bottom half player with new guy.

On the next day of raiding you ask how many bosses have you killed? The best raiders from the day before; the ones with no reason to be replaced, the ones who due to boss mechanics took on additional roles, the ones who obvious done the best on the meters and therefore were not replaced by new guy have all killed 2 bosses and therefore there spot is taken automatically by 0 killers.

Now if we used a /roll system throughout then we would remain with a varying but similarily strength raid throughout, however since you give priority based on how few raid bosses you have killed you get a weaker raid over all, at the same time as the stronger raid of the first day has easily defeated the easier bosses the new weaker raid needs to face the harder bosses.

If we had an infinite pool this wouldn't happen, but as we cannot take an entirely 0 killed raid to every boss(Also if we could we'd be better running more than one raid) and because you only replace a player if he is perpetually and undoubtedly useless instead of say giving every player 2 kill attempts and then replacing any under 25% of the top player doing his roles meter (for dps, healing is more complex as is tanking) players are rarely replaced.

Also when it comes to loot distribution you no longer have a large pot to offer to new replacements, previously and in the guild rules if someone left early or was replaced they lost their share of the pot, now they need only wait until 1 boss dies then get their gold and run.

Gevlon said...

@Sacristy: I have no doubt that my system weakens the raid. I just believe that its weakening effect is smaller than the increased stability coming from a larger pool of moderately geared and experienced players.

However you have a good point about yesterday's failers having better chance next time. It can and will be fixed by more aggressive replacements. However such thing would be unwelcoming to really new players who arrive in 340 gear and no raid experience. If I replace him after 2 low performances, he'll never get better.

He is kicked after 3 fails though, as no one can help him not standing in the ice trap. But we can and should pick up a bit of his low DPS as long as he is not failing or his performance doesn't block us. I mean if we wipe because people eat lava, kicking the lowest DPS won't help us a bit. If we are overwhelmed by adds or hit enrage, he is out of course.

maxim said...

I have seen way too many 10 man guilds with ±15 people fixed roster end up with no people to raid with over summer or other slow periods.

Same for 25 man guilds with up to 35 man rosters.

I don't believe in fixed rosters for non-hardcore guilds.

Pug has it's own issues in terms of improvement speed, but it's promise of always having enough people to raid no matter what is a potent one.

Sheldon said...

"who gets the gold if we bid for spots?"

Why not the raid leader? Shouldn't he be rewarded for taking the initiative to organize an activity that many people want to participate in?

Bristal said...

Weakens the raid in the short term, strengthens it in the long term.

Like investing; less access to fluid capital for NOW, with chance of greater, and more stable returns over time.

Good sense, but your rationale sounds creepily socialist. How do the best performers get rewarded for their superior skills? What motivation is there to be the best?

Perhaps this is one chink in the armor. The system works great for dissatisfied raiders who are essentially capable underachievers (perhaps due to social barriers), but not so great for the true achiever.

A society focused only on long term investing might quash entrepreneurs, who can stimulate huge gains which benefit the whole.

Anonymous said...

It's weird how Gevlon's way leads to perfect democracy, but in a "democratic" setting, people would vote for fascism (aka elitist).

Gevlon said...

@Bristal: if we wipe because of low DPS or low HPS, the weakest link is replaced. So the skilled one is "rewarded" by never being replaced (losing on loot, valor point, being kicked front of 9 peers ...)

Wilson said...

@Anon-

"It's weird how Gevlon's way leads to perfect democracy, but in a "democratic" setting, people would vote for fascism (aka elitist)."

Excuse me while I say, "the huh?" I see one person asking for a policy to be altered for his personal benefit, and the one person who sets the policy telling him no. What does this have to do with democracy?

Anonymous said...

Full ilvl 378 is "overgeared". Getting "undergeared" (less than full ilvl 353; see hereunder for explanation) in the raid has another advantage: they will bid on gear which drops. The more ilvl 346 they have, the more they want to bid. When BiS ilvl 378 went for 500g there was nobody to compete. Loot from first bosses, unless first kill (then it was an "achievement"), also shouldn't go for too much; one can always easily get it again. Stuff which drops from a difficult boss is expected to go for more.

The conclusion from this should be that someone who is high geared should perform according to their gear. Instead of looking at meters (which is skewed anyway), look at their performance according to their gear. The lower geared yet based on their gear high performance person shouldn't be forced to leave if they can contribute to the kill; chances are they will also contribute to the GDKP. If they win the item, they can be part of the pool who is geared AND high performance.

I do think the previous bare minimum of ilvl 333 gemmed/enchanted is 2 Cata-tiers (333 + 13 = 346 + 13 = 359; 26 difference) below the max and hence the minimum requirement for anyone in FL should be 353 (353 + 6 = 359 + 13 = 372 + 6 = 378; 25 difference).

And unfortunately, meters say very little about performance. DPS and HPS are very complex, as Blizzard admitted. This is why there are no official meters. Take Omnitron for example: you can get very high DPS on the normal version of the fight if you pop your CDs in the puddle. Yet if you do that while your pet and you are nuking the shit out of the wrong robot it leads to high dmg. The healers suddenly have to heal and their HPS goes up. No, the less HPS healers have the less they have healed. This can mean they didn't heal enough, or that they decided to heal too much unnecessarily. Case in point: overhealing on Chim.

Anonymous said...

"Then capitalism will be much more humane"

Since when were you a bleeding heart liberal Obama voter?

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: Since I recognized that social people will never let me shoot down the inactives. So it's better to give them jobs than welfare!

Jeanie said...

@Gevlon: But even if you're allowed to shoot the inactives. Then the lowest currently-working class will become the inactives. So if the cycle repeats, you suggested that we should kill each other until, well, noone is alive?

Anonymous said...

He had a blog post on whether to vote for Obama quite a while back...

Yaggle said...

@last anonymous:
Obama is not running for office in any Hungarian elections that I know of. Remember the U.S. is not the center of the universe and every political opinion is not necesarily pertaining to the U.S. nor its president.

Anonymous said...

This is just simple risk aversion. People quit, they transfer, and the difference between 30 ilvl 369 raiders and 13 ilvl 375 is that you can keep progressing if 4 ilvl 369s leave at once and can end up short a tank if 4 ilvl 375 leave.
This isn't optimal for heroic progression, but is preferable for guild survival. Topguilds don't use this method - but - OTOH - a lot of them break up.

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: "who gets the gold if we bid for spots?

If the raiders do, they pay nothing as whatever they bid they get back. If everyone in the guild gets it, it motivates people to bid without even wanting to come, just to generate gold for himself."


Sorry for not replying to this earlier.

Gold payment would be in proportion to the amount bid, and only to the next X bidders who missed out on spots. That way, only serious bidders get a) raid access, and b) any benefit from gold bids.

For example, if there are 2 tanking spots, and there are 5 tanks who want the role, then the top two bids pay the gold to the next 2 highest, and the 5th person gets nothing for attempting to leech with a low bid.