Blog update: 
The debate over the ZG-leech shown something clearly: to effectively prove something to un-believers you must comply to much higher standards than you'd need simply to do the same thing.
It was obvious to me that this M&S is completely unable to pull his weight, he will die in the maze and probably kills someone with toxic link, wastes all our spirits at Mandokir by standing in the eartquake and will definitely cause our doom at Jindo if he is targeted by leap.
Is the screenshots and the armory link is enough to prove it to someone who knows how to play? Obviously. He missed glyphs, gems, enchants and had zero bosskills or PvP rating despite being 85 months ago. I doubt that one can suck any more. On the top of that he was "proving" his point by trash DPS, not even damage done, that alone should be kick-worthy signal of total ignorance of the game mechanics. But preaching to the choir is pointless. Those who already make lot of gold and raid/PvP with good results don't really need my advices. The point of the blog is to show the good results of the goblinish ideas to people who are currently stuck with M&S "friends".
Was my evidence enough to convince someone who is not already good? According to the comments, no. To my sad surprise, there were several people who defended him based on his trash DPS results, or gave the standard socialist bullshit: I did not give him enough chances to prove himself good.
Of course I could delete these comments or call their writers idiots, but after alienating all of them, who is left on the blog? Only those who don't need it as they already know everything I can tell.
To prove these things to people who didn't accept them yet, I have to go far from the normal way to create evidence. For example I should have waited while the ZG-leech wipe us with toxic link or simply does half damage of the tank. If I would have thought about the blog, I had done that. However I'm not a blogger 24/7. While I play the game mostly for the blog, I can get carried away by it and play as a player. And as a player my gut reaction is to get rid of such leeches as soon as possible.
A goblinish player can instant-kick the ungemmed M&S. The blogger who preaches about goblinism cannot. However it means that to effectively preach, I must be much more socialist in life than I recommend, looking a hypocrit. After all, how much naive one shall be to not insta-kick someone without gems, hoping that he bothered to learn his class despite he did not bother to do something much easier: walk to the AH and buy a handful of gems.
A goblinish player does not need to lead Tol Barad, therefore does not need to care what morons with his guild tag do. A goblinish player would never run a guild, just join one where the progress and the demands are in balance. Me on the other hand have to create some working example to provide evidence in the blog and recruit for it.
A goblinish player does not need more gold than he spend. To prove that goldmaking strategies work I still collected several hundred thousand gold.
One way out of this trap could be teaching by example. I simply say: look, we are in world top 10K by these rules while playing completely casually, follow us! Please note that with this sentence I'd expect blind trust in us, based on our results, opening the door to false proofs. What if the guild is only successful because I put so much effort in it? How could I expect anyone to blindly follow into the idea of "never follow anyone blindly"?!
Am I doomed to only teach by bad example? I mean do as a social would do, fail and then say: "look I tried, did not work". Could do it, but who in his right mind would come to my guild then? I can make myself suck for the blog but no one would follow me there.
Is there a way to both prove the idea to doubters and living it?
The debate over the ZG-leech shown something clearly: to effectively prove something to un-believers you must comply to much higher standards than you'd need simply to do the same thing.
It was obvious to me that this M&S is completely unable to pull his weight, he will die in the maze and probably kills someone with toxic link, wastes all our spirits at Mandokir by standing in the eartquake and will definitely cause our doom at Jindo if he is targeted by leap.
Is the screenshots and the armory link is enough to prove it to someone who knows how to play? Obviously. He missed glyphs, gems, enchants and had zero bosskills or PvP rating despite being 85 months ago. I doubt that one can suck any more. On the top of that he was "proving" his point by trash DPS, not even damage done, that alone should be kick-worthy signal of total ignorance of the game mechanics. But preaching to the choir is pointless. Those who already make lot of gold and raid/PvP with good results don't really need my advices. The point of the blog is to show the good results of the goblinish ideas to people who are currently stuck with M&S "friends".
Was my evidence enough to convince someone who is not already good? According to the comments, no. To my sad surprise, there were several people who defended him based on his trash DPS results, or gave the standard socialist bullshit: I did not give him enough chances to prove himself good.
Of course I could delete these comments or call their writers idiots, but after alienating all of them, who is left on the blog? Only those who don't need it as they already know everything I can tell.
To prove these things to people who didn't accept them yet, I have to go far from the normal way to create evidence. For example I should have waited while the ZG-leech wipe us with toxic link or simply does half damage of the tank. If I would have thought about the blog, I had done that. However I'm not a blogger 24/7. While I play the game mostly for the blog, I can get carried away by it and play as a player. And as a player my gut reaction is to get rid of such leeches as soon as possible.
A goblinish player can instant-kick the ungemmed M&S. The blogger who preaches about goblinism cannot. However it means that to effectively preach, I must be much more socialist in life than I recommend, looking a hypocrit. After all, how much naive one shall be to not insta-kick someone without gems, hoping that he bothered to learn his class despite he did not bother to do something much easier: walk to the AH and buy a handful of gems.
A goblinish player does not need to lead Tol Barad, therefore does not need to care what morons with his guild tag do. A goblinish player would never run a guild, just join one where the progress and the demands are in balance. Me on the other hand have to create some working example to provide evidence in the blog and recruit for it.
A goblinish player does not need more gold than he spend. To prove that goldmaking strategies work I still collected several hundred thousand gold.
One way out of this trap could be teaching by example. I simply say: look, we are in world top 10K by these rules while playing completely casually, follow us! Please note that with this sentence I'd expect blind trust in us, based on our results, opening the door to false proofs. What if the guild is only successful because I put so much effort in it? How could I expect anyone to blindly follow into the idea of "never follow anyone blindly"?!
Am I doomed to only teach by bad example? I mean do as a social would do, fail and then say: "look I tried, did not work". Could do it, but who in his right mind would come to my guild then? I can make myself suck for the blog but no one would follow me there.
Is there a way to both prove the idea to doubters and living it?
61 comments:
You are committing a hasty generalization fallacy with both your readers and people with incompletely augmented gear.
No one disagrees that lack of gems and enchants is a good indicator of M&S. Many do disagree on how well that correlates to failure in HCs, raising the question of whether it is more efficient to just stick it out and only dump him if it provides more evidence.
A goblin should do a cold calculation based on the facts of the situation, not make absurd stands on principle and whine about not boosting someone inferior. Goblin morality is that which is best for the goblin, not blind adherence to an arbitrary principle.
Well, you were right to kick him, correlation may not prove causation, but correlation alone is sufficient for the purposes of analyzing risk v. reward. In this case, the correlation is between gear (enchants/gems and/or simply ilvl)and performance. (damage done to bosses) While unenchanted/ungemmed gear does not gurantee poor performance, as this does not cause the other, it IS heavily correlated, as one of the factors which cause unenchanted/ungemmed gear is low skill, which also causes low performance. The few cases of a character with poor gear (unenchanted etc.) and high skill, (as in my case) are rare enough that it's often not worth it to bother testing whether or not he actually has skill. This is because most players with high skill don't run heroics to beat heroics, they run heroics so they can get some gear to raid, for valors or simply the ilvl 353 drops. This being the case, a high skilled player would usually take less than 10 runs before it's unnecessary to run ZA/ZG at all, and so removes himself from the LFG pool. So while evidence was ... inconclusive that he actully had low skill (and therefore will have low performance) the bad gear is more than sufficient for one to choose to kick him. (Assuming of course that actully does speed up the run if he WAS a ... moron. If, say, kicking him would make one lose the 5% damage buff and prevent one from using LFG to search for another, even if the DPS was complete dead weight, it would be more efficient to simply leave him in, for 4 players + 1 dead but with the 4 players having 5% Damage,hp,healing buff is > 4 players without buff.)
As for converting non-"goblins" to the "goblinish" "ideal," that is somewhat more difficult. Since becoming more efficient generally requires 1, desire to become more efficient, and 2, sufficient intelligence to figure out ways to do so. This is of course assuming you do not wish to simply lead by example, by proving that the goblin way both works and is efficient, and ask for them to simply look at results and ignore the actual process on blind faith. (I suspect that even on blind faith, with sufficient routines installed, even morons can pass a Turing Test testing "goblinism.")
Sadly, as I posses both the desire to become stronger, and sufficient intelligence to find ways to do so, I am rather unable to emphasize with those that do not posses the two qualities, and am unable to think of ways to somehow force these qualities onto other people. Which is not to say that I would be out there converting people even if I possesed that ability, since I suspect that on an absolute scale, I would perform about the same in both a world filled with goblins or a world filled with easily exploitable morons.
So, if your wish is to generate more "goblins" I would suggest the blind faith methods, showing results and figuring out the routines necessary for anyone, by simply following the routines, to pass a Turing Test designed to test "goblinishness." Since those possing the 2 qualities necessary will eventually make their way to the top regardless, just like how even if I reinstall windows and somehow forget every single website I favortied, after say, 5 years, I would likely end up with the same websites I've favorited before, since I have an natural propensity for those.
I think you're confusing two points. For sure, it was efficient to kick him, as possibility of him being useless and even harmfull was high. But you didn't prove him useless, though you took that as proven in your post. For kicking itself you don't need to prove, high possibility is enough to make the strategy of kicking people without gems effective. But efficiency of that strategy cause of overall high number of ungemmed people that don't know how to play the game and their class doesn't mean that player who pleys the game at a high level can't run heroic ungemmed and pull more dps than properly geared ppl with less skill.
So you didn't prove him to be a retard, despite kicking him was the right way to go.
Also, if you're implying that people with such point of view are those whose progress in the game is low - you're not right again (:
Dungeon Finder has a bad reputation for people being kicked unfairly. A lot of people have bad experiences with this, or people like me never tried it because of the things they have heard. I think people are quick to criticize you for your kick because of the fears many of us have that we are not perfect, and some jerk will kick us for not being perfect in some way. Even though this is a heroic, people still can use your blog as a sounding board against perceived unfair discrimination in PUGs in general.
You really cannot prove player X will fail until they actually fail. People who have not been in your situation will need extra convincing. But maybe some will not, people who are able to believe your judgement is good after dealing with these ungemmed unglyphed players so many times. Some will always doubt you but even changing one mind can be a success, no?
Teaching by bad example isn't what you are solely doing, but it is easier than teaching by right example. It is much more simple to say: "don't do this" instead of "do this" as there are many more of the former than the latter.
Moreover, there isn't always one and only way, and if you tell people "do this" they will not think for themselves, they will simply be copycats. It is better to make them understand why they should "do this". A good way to do that is by teaching them "don't do this".
As you can see you quickly end up with teaching by bad example. This is OK, as long as you also every once in a while have good reference to positive example. A clear way to show how to do things. Else you become a negative naysayer.
For example, you can teach people to never stand in fire. Until there is a graphic which looks like fire which is actually good fire. You can teach tanks to get the best gear and stack mastery and stamina until there is a fight where avoidance only matters. You can teach people to not attack siege engines until they stumble upon a 5 min timer with horde attacking one tower while you're holding the bases.
For example, one can copy an EJ spec, but it is better to understand an EJ spec and understand why it is the best spec. Even then, it is the best spec for 25m HC raiding; not leveling, not 5m HC dungeon, not 10m normal raiding, nor 10m HC or 25m normal raiding. I can give various examples (such as not having the ability of removing magic debuff from friendly units in the resto druid EJ spec which sucks in PvP, 5m, 10m yet probably works in 25m if you work it out with other healers) but they are beyond scope.
Since your blog is of serious nature instead of lolspeak and such you're going to attract people with similar attitude. People who think critically, try to find flaws in your thinking. It doesn't surprise me at all you are not able to convince everyone, nor that some have vocal opinion about some of your writings. There will be a wide array of types of people: philosophers on acid, asslickers, devil's advocate, rambling housewives, trolls. People with different backgrounds in specific fields, cultural backgrounds, different WoW history, MMO history, gaming history. The only thing we all have in common for certain is that we read your blog hence are interested in your writings. Although even that is shakey grounds since theres also lurkers and one-time repliers. The bad news for you is: you will never hear from them again, you will never hear their success stories based on what they read from you. This may make you feel useless, but rest assured if you remain believing in the quality of your content, your blog remains useful. You could run an experimental thread where you ask readers what they learned from your writings but if you read comments carefully you can already notice such.
You are a stubborn and outspoken personality. What you can do as host with the writings of your readership is learn from their feedback whenever possible while at the same time teaching those who are worthy when you are able to. It is however pointless to teach those who are stubborn, outspoken, yet unwilling to listen to the other person's arguments. It is a waste of time, money, and energy to even consider bothering with that. At the same time there will always remain people who disagree with you, and they will express themselves. Live with it, learn when their arguments are worthy and when they are open for discussion. Else, don't bother!!
That said I'd be interested in longterm readers providing insight about how your blog, or perhaps you as blogger, have evolved through the years. From what I gather ever since you started The PuG you've evolved into a more M&S-related blog.
The reason I keep reading this blog is simply because Gevlon accurately demonstrates that M&S exist and are the main thing holding back personal progress.
Mostly it was when he said word for word what my guild master had been saying after wipes and why we weren't progressing. Things like, "we just need to gear people up" "people keep leaving after WE gear them up" "that was just bad luck, we need to practise more". The unfortunate part was that there were no guilds to be found on my server that were casual and not filled with M&S trying to raid.
Now I started a guild on Rift that better suits my goals. Using the mass invite stradegy for generating platinum coupled with higher standards for raiding, I can raid when I want without burnout and without having to farm continuously for money. After 6 days my guild has already grown to 93 members. I plan to use the /roll for determining who raids on a given night, the fail fines system and chat rules for in raid talk.
I'm also considering using the free transfer in Rift to start mass invite guilds on multiple shards and transfer alts with Platinum back to my main.
My advice is play the game. Morons reveal themselves in the most stupid of ways. There's no need to hunt them out to exibit them on the blog. They do it themselves.
>> Dungeon Finder has a bad reputation for people being kicked unfairly.
And now please think for a moment where does this reputation come from. Just a hint - I'm using Dungeon Finder for ages and been kicked from a group only once and still got no idea why, I think it was someone else's mistake who clicked the wrong target since we had a moron in that group (a couple of them, to be honest).
Yes, most of the times I'm a tank, but whenever I play as dps or healer, I'm never kicked as well, even if my dps is significantly lower that the top one's, but still acceptable for the dungeon.
I state: people are never ever kicked in DF unfairly. Yes, I think there was 0.001% of the cases when the 4 guys from the same guild joined a dungeon, got the 5th dps and kicked him right before the final boss to 4-man the boss and get the loot for themselves, but it's 0.001% of the cases, I haven't seen it once, even while being "the 5th dps".
The "in DF they kick unfairly" vibe comes from M&S who are frequently kicked *fairly*.
Pretension, not only does correlation not proven causation, you have not even proven correlation in this case. You have not even tried. You and Gevlon are both making claims based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence.
I certainly am willing to accept that there is some correlation here, but saying things like "..IS heavily correlated.." is just dishonest.
Rigorous methodology is even more important when you are trying to prove something you believe to be true.
There is a difference between not desiring to even give someone a chance to prove they are a moron (perfectly valid worldview), and outright claiming they are a moron for reasons you already proven were irrelevant. Enchants and glyphs would not save him from poison walls or magically give him amazing DPS.
What you are engaging in here is Proof By Elimination of the Counter-Example. He was M&S because he had no gems/etc, and would have been a liability on bosses because he was M&S. Of course, people with full gems/etc can (and often are) still liabilities on the bosses and it is entirely possible to NOT be a liability on bosses sans gems/etc. You proven this yourself with the Undergeared project.
Socials care about the way things look, asocials care about results. I get that you don't want to waste time on whatever the off-chance is that he is not M&S. I can even sympathize with wanting bad things for M&S out of principle, even when it does not make rational, goblin sense. That being said, he is not M&S until proven to be so in a way that actually matters. You do not have to give him the chance, but you cannot claim what you cannot prove.
Incidentally, I don't know how recent the stats are, but that ungemmed guy apparently has 5 full clears of ZA and ZG apiece, along with two (nerfed) boss kills in BoT. Just saying.
What if the guild is only successful because I put so much effort in it?
I kind of is. Look at your raid calendar: only 1 raid is scheduled: yours.
If you are in someone else's raid and you dont like their strategy and leave, the raid disbands instead of getting a new person to replace you.
Let's look at it this way: if you take a 1 month vacation, starting from now, I would really be interested to see the number of raids being held and the progress being done.
I think again you have not understood why we defended the guy. I don’t doubt that he is a slacker. Let’s get that clear now – he is a slacker.
Answer me this; given that I don’t inspect, what would have made me believe that he was anymore likely to fail on toxic link than your guildies? If I had been healing that group I would have expected all of you to die on toxic link.
It is the hypocrisy and double standards that most posters protested about. Your group set out a standard that he had to meet and that standard was DPS output. You didn’t say “you will wipe us via toxic link” or “we will kick you if you fail on toxic link”.
The quote was “10k dps or kick” – a standard that one of your guildies couldn’t meet.
Last night I did a completely random ZG pug and the tank pulled 12k dps, whilst the dps ranged from 16 to 19k dps. That isn’t a common random DF group but as a raid guild that is exactly the performance I would expect from your team.
If I had been healing that group (and bearing in mind I don’t inspect) I would have assumed that you were all equally as bad each other. That is the point here; the performance from the entire group was far from stellar. The damage outputs from your tank and guildie dps were on an M&S level and the top guy was just average – average for a random sub-optimal pug but below average for a raid guilder.
So if I had been in that group should I have mass kicked the lot of you or waited until you failed? Clearly by your own standards I should have just mass kicked the lot of you.
Relating this to another of your blog posts, surely your guildies deserve a guild kick just like Kwik, Kwek and Kwak on the grounds that they are playing like M&S in a public environment whilst carrying your guild name above their heads? I look at those screenies you posted and I think “Gevlons guild is full of M&S”. Isn’t that what you wanted to avoid when kicking Kwik, Kwek and Kwak?
Those guys decrease your recruitment chances because I wouldn’t want to raid with the three guys you have there. Indeed they are about the standard of the guys in my current social guild (who are fully gemmed/enchanted) and I repeatedly decline offers to raid with them.
I believe your recruitment strategy of “if someone has the brains to read the rules then they have the brains to play” is currently failing. This troll dungeon run and the Tol Barad kicking incident clearly proves that too many are slipping through the net. Yes they cannot sabotage your raids directly but as you point out in a previous post they can damage your recruiting and hurt raiding indirectly.
"Is there a way to both prove the idea to doubters and living it?"
Not in a single atomic operation, no. But that's ok. You don't convince people in one operation anyway. And even when people are convinced of the principle, you're not out to persuade them of your total infallibility, so this sort of question continues to arise.
If your concern is that you may have done some damage, have inadvertently convinced people away from what you think, then this is hard to avoid; but I'm pretty sure you accept that risk when you make any post. What counts over the long term is whether the totality of the posts, and the results, holds up.
And I say this btw with no judgement on whether you did the right or wrong thing - it's all part of finding out.
Re: Anonymous "A goblin should do a cold calculation based on the facts of the situation, not make absurd stands on principle and whine about not boosting someone inferior."
While cold calculation does have it's advantages, it is better to simply have the right "instincts." That is, to program yourself so that your first reaction is also the appropriate reaction, this has the advantage of being significantly faster in decision making processes, and the fast and correct decision should be nearly always, if not always, superior to the slow but also correct decision. So the only thing necessary is to make sure that one does not make fast but incorrect decisions, and that can be done by simply reflection upon ones decisions when things go badly and also randomly even when they do go well. (So that you can improve the natural reactions that are "good" but not perfect.)
In other words, it's superior to have a bunch of cached reactions to respond to various situations appropriately, than to brute force every single decision with calculation. Cached reactions are far faster to recall and, being reflex, would be reaction which comes quickest to mind, and so the quickest to execute, making it superior in anything where speed matters, which should be practically everything.
What this method of decision making does is to move the time used to decide upon a course of action away from the actual temporal location of the act, and instead moves it to whenever one decides to reflect upon ones decisions, allowing one the ability to choose either before hand or afterwards what ones decision should be, and unless you're so bloody perfect at time management that you always have just enough time during stuff like deciding whether or not to kick someone from your 5-man, this should allow you greater flexibility in how one spends ones time. Of course, it does carry the significant disadvantage that most caches are not updated frequently and unless you're doing proper maintainance you're going to do something "stupid" eventually on instinct.
"tl:dr" cold calculation arriving at the right conclusion is good, but instinct arriving at the right conclusion is better, though arriving at the wrong conclusion obviously is bad.
@Coralina: I break it down to you. My guildies did good job in that instance, we killed everything fast and first time. No one damaged low. The fact that you consider one of them low based on a TRASH DPS CHART tells nothing about my guildy. It just tells that you are ignorant.
@Azuriel: With undergeared I proved that you don't need high stats. In that sense, yes that moron did not need the stats coming from his gems. I claim without doubt that the lack of his gems were a clear SIGNAL of him being useless. Yes, there is an off chance that he was useful.
Usual experience say that lions eat you if they have a chance. There is an off chance that a lion just purrs at you and lick your face. I saw one doing it to kids in a Circus. They liked it, climbed on the lion and hugged it.
Go to the local ZOO, climb in the lions cage and hug the lion! AFTER THAT tell me that I should not use the common heuristic: "ungemmed is a useless moron".
You might want to re-read the comments about the LFD Kick.
While there are readers who e.g. think that making use of the Random Group tool means you have to accept not everyone you end up Grouping with meets your (exaggerated or not) Gear-expectations (something that can be avoided by forming your own Group beforehand like the truly non-lazy do), others never denied you could have Kicked the hapless Random immediately on the basis of Gear.
(wether or not this shows that PvP'ers are a bit more practical where Random Groups are concerned is another debate)
However, what happened (at least according to the Post) was this: your Guildy made up a test, your Guild accepted this test, and the Random performed this test better than your Guildy.
So not only imposed a private party a test that the ones' whose Tool this party is using because they don't want to form their own Group, never created in the first place, the other user who did comply with the Tool's creators' standard, passed this test with flying colors and it was your Guildy, if anybody, who should have been kicked based on those results.
Should you have never bothered with the test in the first place?
Probably, but you did, and by ignoring the results of your own, self-created test, you quite understandably come across as having acted rather petty.
TLDR: don't bother with tests if the end-result isn't influenced by it because you've already made up your mind.
Keep on doing what you are doing with the guild until you think the goblinish asocial ideas sunk in well enough that it upholds its own rules. After that, step out for a month or two and observe results.
Or, if you want to keep on playing, just join on another account on another char (even though that violates one of your own rules, but I imagine you don't want to give up Guildleadership, except maybe to your GF), to be the non-Gevlon observer.
Just be a silent observer, and see what the people that you have influenced with goblinish ideas directly do. If they too would kick such a player, if they too would lead TB now, if they too would progress on bosses with gold loot distribution, then you show your ideas work right?
As long as there is Gevlon, and Gevlon is you, then there can be no uninfluenced observation. Find anonimity within your own guild.
Note that if you find that hard to do, you are experiencing social feelings. It should not be a hard thing to do at all.
Pretension: your comments about instinct vs methodological analysis are missing the point of my comment. The point was that the 'principle' of not carrying M&S has no place in the goblin ethos. If it is to the goblin's advantage to carry a particular M&S then he should do it. If it is not, then he should kick him.
In this case, it seems to me that Gevlon chose not to carry him based on that principle rather than based on any actual cost/benefit evaluation, instinctual or otherwise.
@Gevlon
Maximum kudos and respect to you for not doing a Tobold and locking/censoring comments.
I think I managed to get you to say what I wanted you to say.
You said your guildies successfully cleared that dungeon despite their DPS level on the meters. What does that prove? Well on top of proving the “enough” theory it proves that jumping into a random HC and saying “10k DPS or kick” is “ignorant”.
The DPS requirement came from your guildie (it isn’t my chosen indicator) and you have not only described it as “ignorant” you also confirmed that it is a bad indicator.
Is the lack of gems a better predictor of poor performance? Sadly we will never know.
If only you had given the guy a chance and he had screwed up, you could have made an epic blog post about it! This was a golden opportunity to prove your theories correct. This is a terribly wasted opportunity.
The problem is that you did not behave like a goblin and neither did you behave like a hypocrite. Had you been a hypocrite and attempted to boost the guy it would have made a great story.
That being said, a goblin doesn’t instant kick in a random run due to a lack of gems. As I said yesterday I look at results – pretty much like you do in your raids. When someone fails enough to block our progress I either kick them or leave myself. I only care that they do “enough” and I don’t care how they do it.
My objective is 140VP and I don’t care if it is pretty. As you said the other day – you don’t need to look good to do well. That is the goblin way. I will happily pay 30g in repairs because the guy with no gems wiped us a few times. Why? Because in the time wasted trying to get five guildies together I could have earned far more than 30g.
If I had to guess I’d say you were acting emotionally and out of principle in that dungeon. At least attempting to carry the guy would have complied with goblin logic if the objective had been to prove a point to your readers (or get 140VP).
"Enchants and glyphs would not save him from poison walls or magically give him amazing DPS."
Yes, it would give him an amazing DPS increase. But more important it means you are playing with someone who put effort into output (damage in this case); a non-slacker. Again, watch the context: we're not talking about say an ilvl 353 he just got from previous run which he did not gem/enchant/forge. We're talking about the lack of many enchantments, gems, gem slots, and glyphs he should have had long ago on this character whilst leveling! Someone who slacks so majorly on such simple things is probably going to slack in instances as well.
About the DPS increase. He has replaced his ilvl 333 helm with an ilvl 359 (from Valiona, tanking one) but not yet gemmed it. He has also started to gem his gear. He uses str + mastery gems which is rather silly since crit is also yellow stat, and better.
I have loaded his current PvE gear in Rawr and used the same talent tree he used, with the glyphs he had. This gave him an overal DPS of 12141.
What I did next: I properly enchanted, gemmed, reforged his gear and glyphed. The output is now 15132. So by properly glyphing, gemmed, forging, enchanting he would gain single target 3k DPS. The most output came from enchanting his gear.
I have however cheated by putting Landslide on his ilvl 346 weapons.
So I did it again. This time, I used Executioner/Berserker on weapons, and the cheap enchantments you'd put on blues. On the purple ilvl 378 I put expensive enchantments. On the shoulders I put Sons of Hodir enchantment because he doesn't have Inscription max and I don't find that slacking for a HC dungeon. On legs I put WotLK enchantment. I used BS sockets since they're very cheap to add. The outcome is then 14512. This is still 2,4k single target DPS increase single target. Approx 20% performance increase. The lacking glyphs account for 0,5k DPS. I find this substantial increase.
Perhaps more important for me is that I don't want to play with undergeared players for the following reasons: 1) they do less output than the average player which wastes my time. Apparently people on this blog have low standards or play on the most shittiest battlegroups imaginable (12k DPS is far below average in my experience), love to be hours in faceroll content from aeons ago, or are too retarded to /inspect people. Not me! If I don't like what I see in /inspect I go A) afk B) leave group C) leave group and log some other toon for random HC D) kick the bugger 2) they tend to have less experience with the fights, failing more, again wasting my time 3) they Need Roll on every goddamn piece of gear for whatever spec. Especially true with hybrids (love getting queued with hunters, rogues, warlocks, and mages) which means I'm missing my 20% chance on getting a shard which means I miss money I'd otherwise potentially gain. I'm low on shards because my characters need enchantments on thier new 4.2 gear.
So there you have it: 3 valid, goblinish reasons to not want to play with an undergeared slacker. Yet LFD is designed for undergeared slackers to get carried. Because before LFD you had to join a trade PuG and travel. People would inspect before they'd run with you since people don't want to waste their time. Now its entirely random whether you waste your time, or whether you get queued with good people. However, as social as I am, in LFD (and if I was trade PuGing, idem) I am lenient towards a full ilvl 346 PvE geared player who enchants and gems their gear. It doesn't have to be the expensive gems and enchantments and I assume they glyphed correct (apparently stupid assumption given this basketcase we discuss). Why? 2 reasons: because he put effort in his output, and because its the valid upgrade path for him.
"Your group set out a standard that he had to meet and that standard was DPS output."
No, the shaman DD set out a standard and nobody objected to it. Nobody said either: "next trash mob 10k DPS or kick"; the warrior proactively planned to prove he did high DPS on a single target mob. These are important differences. If I was in the group and were a member of The PuG I would have objected to the 10k DPS standard since 1) I don't care about his output; I care he slacks 2) 10k DPS, at least in 4.0/4.1 (warrior DD has been nerfed slightly in 4.2), is a piss to achieve for a warrior 3) CDs (Recklessness & Death Wish; ~40% increase) skew DPS output; nobody goes to a target dummy for 20 sec then spamming DPS meters, and NOBODY agreed with the metric recount posted by our suspected slacker. You all took it for granted in the comments!
"The damage outputs from your tank"
You have tanking characters. You are aware tank DPS goes up in AoE fights? Besides, what are you smoking? Who in their right mind gives a rat about tank DPS? That isn't their job. I care about tank survivability and tank TPS. For tank TPS the tank will need some amount of DPS, but it isn't their primary concern. Similarly, I don't care about DD's healing even if the Dispersion, Cloak of Shadows, or Victory Rush is correct timed. I do appreciate such, but healing is the healer's job. In a hardcore raid or specific encounter such may be very important to the point where not doing it means "death", "fail", "wipe", or "gkick".
"(wether or not this shows that PvP'ers are a bit more practical where Random Groups are concerned is another debate)"
PvPers form their own arena, and cannot kick people from random BG. rated BG isn't formed via LFD. So of course PvPers are less likely to kick other people, especially when they are the ones who are getting boosted in their PvP gear. They're not used to kick system.
"Probably, but you did, and by ignoring the results of your own, self-created test, you quite understandably come across as having acted rather petty."
See above; Gevlon never created a test, nor defined a test ground. The shaman DD set a mark, and the warrior decided to benchmark next fight without announcing such beforehand. Such is easily manipulated, and the target minimum was both low and unnecessary. You can blame Gevlon for not commenting on the DPS mark though.
"I claim without doubt that the lack of his gems were a clear SIGNAL of him being useless". Wasn't that the issue you had with Gearscore? A lot of people claimed that GS was a good tool, because it saved them time to filter the filth, however you felt it was stupid to label a player by his gear. Now, you are on the other side of the coin labeling a player for his lack/possesion of gems.
Recently I got a couple of upgrades from the new dailies, as a result my reforges messed up. Should I need to reforge all my gear (knowing that the next troll heroic will give me enough points for the T12 chest and I will need to reforge once again) to fill the other players expectations? Or should I skip the reforges knowing that I overgear the dungeon?
There is no point arguing if the warrior was a M&S (he probably was), the main issue is that you transformed that run into a "LFM Troll heroic, 9000000000 GS needed or no invite"
1 000 posts and still going strong, just as passionate and outspoken as always! I know you don't care much for this kind of things, but nevertheless here are some congratulations from a fellow blogger who gave up about WoW, but is back to blogging now - even though in a different field. WoW gets old eventually. Writing doesn't.
On the top of that he was "proving" his point by trash DPS, not even damage done, that alone should be kick-worthy signal of total ignorance of the game mechanics.
It was Adanedar who proposed dps as the standard: "10k DPS or kick". If you truly believe using this standard is kick-worthy, then you should have kicked him as well, but you didn't. If your goal is to convince intelligent skeptics like me, then you need to not ignore inconvenient facts like having different standards for guild members and non-guild members. Doing so merely undermines your case.
What if the guild is only successful because I put so much effort in it?
A number of guilds have formed based on your rules for both Undergeared and The Pug. Some of these have even used your blog as a recruiting platform. To the best of my knowledge, all have faded away without killing a single raid boss. To me, the strongly suggests that it is your effort that makes your guild work, and not your philosophy.
@Anonymous (13:29):
With regards to your comment that the warrior proactively set out to prove he could meet the 10k standard:
I am glad you said that because you prove a point I made on Gevlons blog post about failure punishment..
I warned that if you fine 300g for standing in fire and dying, people will focus on the fire at the expense of other areas where failure is far harder to detect or blame is far harder to apportion.
If you set a target like “10k dps or kick” then expect to see players using cooldowns on trash and then not having them available for a boss.
There is little point discussing that further as even Gevlon has admitted the “10k DPS or kick” statement was ignorant. It is up to Gevlon how he deals with his guildie but we are all agreed that 10k DPS is not only a bad choice of standard to select but it also results in undesirable behaviour.
Real life example: The UK Government set health service targets for waiting times to see doctors but this inadvertently led to Clinics refusing to allow people to make appointments more than a day in advance… People are deterred from seeing the doctor as it is harder to get time off work so health standards fall as badly or by more than when there were long waiting times. It is however far harder to apportion blame – is it the patients fault for being lazy, their employers fault for not letting them take leave at short notice or the Clinics fault for not allowing advanced appointments? Now see my healing analogy in said blog post… It is only Gevlons strong leadership that makes this counter productive rule a success.
As for tank DPS, this is a 5 man and not FL HC. The aim is 140VP ASAP. Tank output plays its part and slacking slows the group. My badly geared tanks that are fully survival spec’d could produce that output.
You can lose more DPS from a badly played tank than you would from a DPS having no gems. Again let me stress that Gevlon was demanding an optimal run so don’t blame me. I don’t care if the tank pulls another 2k dps (or if a guy has no gems) so long as I get my VP in a “reasonable” time/cost.
Hi Gevlon!
I think part of the issue is that your argument is fairly nebulous and poorly defined. It often seems like your posts boil down to 'I like goblinish ways, and you should too!' That's not an argument, just an endorsement.
For an argument you need to demonstrate that your way works better, that it leads to better consequences. The best way to compare consequences (ignoring mortality) is hedonic utility. So essentially: Playing using goblinish ways will make you happier.
It's tricky to weigh what makes up happiness. High performance play, fewer fails, pleasant attitude, fairness of loot distribution, etc. Some people value loot fairness far more than high performance. Some people prefer grouping with a high performance annoying player over a low performance friendly player. You can just assign a weighting, but then your argument only works for people with similar weights.
Even if you were able to figure out a good measurement, you still need to make comparisons. You can't look at a case on it's own, you need to establish context.
An experiment! Grab 3 friends and queue for a troll heroic, with the last slot an open dps. Measure how well he does, perhaps with overall damage done, boss ability fails, avoidable damage taken, whether they were rolling need on everything, how vocal/pleasant, etc. Repeat this 20 times! Get some data! Be sure to take note of how well geared they are, whether they're well gemmed/enchanted, the time of day you queue. All that.
Now you can do analysis. The average solo-queued dpser during evening hours will have X performance, Y pleasantness, Z fails. Our current pugged 5th player has a std dev below the average performance, average pleasantness, two std devs below the average fails. So kicking him will give us a high probability of getting someone better!
If you've got a guy that's completely unenchanted and ungemmed, but still performs above the average pug, then M&S or not, you should still keep him.
Matters of principle are one thing. Good data analysis is quite another.
Gevlon, my friend, you have seen the chains and burdens of leadership very clearly in the last two days. I'd think you'd seen them before, since you have 1000 posts (congratulations, by the way, although I know you don't like that sort of thing. Whatever else is said, you're a prolific writer.)
You're realizations are exactly correct. As a leader of the "goblinish" community, you are going to be held to higher standards of evidence and behavior. As a leader, you're going to be expected to suffer so that your flock does not (in that you'll have to wipe on the boss to prove your point).
This is a crossroads of a sorts. You have a few choices; be the leader all the time and enjoy the game less as a result (stinks). Be a player all the time but don't expect to change as many minds blogging due to having smaller amounts of evidence and the like (stinks, but this is mostly what you've done), or be a goblin all the time and become harsher and less patient in game to prove that you live by your word, but in the process potentially alienate some of your readers and your guild or perhaps make decisions that upon reflection are bad (stinks).
It's great to be at the top, but it's lonely. You unfortunately can't have it all.
Congratulations again on another nicely reflective post.
"You said your guildies successfully cleared that dungeon despite their DPS level on the meters. What does that prove? Well on top of proving the “enough” theory it proves that jumping into a random HC and saying “10k DPS or kick” is “ignorant”."
The tank's DPS does not matter. If it is half of the DPS, everyone is happy. Tanks need to keep threat, not DPS.
The other DPS, Livia, does good DPS in this example and in raids.
Data is missing: only ONE person was low (lower than 10k) on DPS in ONE meassurement: one trash mob, single target. Nothing else was meassured. The meassurement was unplanned by all except the warrior. How many times do people have to keep point this out? Gevlon also said they got a very good rogue replacement.
Also, remember the warrior had 3 stacks of Luck of the Draw. As did the rogue. The shaman DD nor the hunter had this buff. That too skews the DPS meter.
"Is the lack of gems a better predictor of poor performance? Sadly we will never know."
Yes, we will. You can sim it. I have simmed it in Rawr. The major DPS loss on the warrior comes not from forges, gems, or glyphs though they all add up. It comes from lack of enchantments. Yes, even cheap enchantments!
"The problem is that you did not behave like a goblin and neither did you behave like a hypocrite. Had you been a hypocrite and attempted to boost the guy it would have made a great story."
Yes, he did behave like a goblin provided he spend those 15 minutes efficiently. Why do people assume others don't do this? When I play WoW I go AFK all the time when I have to wait. I have also provided 3 solid reasons why one should not play LFD with undergeared players and have noted that an undergeared player who enchants/gems/forges/glyphs did the best they could for their output whereas a slacker hasn't.
"My objective is 140VP and I don’t care if it is pretty."
Some do play with whatever trash they come across. There is no premoderation; precisely why LFD means boosting M&S. Although depends on battlegroup and some other factors.
You can queue every 15 min. You can do something useful in your time like filing your tax report, do some programming, make coffee/dinner, log an alt and queue on that, do a BG, go farm or AH, twitter your aunt Tilly, pick up that juggling hobby you ditched years ago. ANYTHING! Heck, you could even leave group if you found out theres no enchanter and spend your time more efficient since getting a shard is worth 10 times more than getting the gear. Or losing it to an undergeared fellow.
""I claim without doubt that the lack of his gems were a clear SIGNAL of him being useless". Wasn't that the issue you had with Gearscore? A lot of people claimed that GS was a good tool, because it saved them time to filter the filth, however you felt it was stupid to label a player by his gear. Now, you are on the other side of the coin labeling a player for his lack/possesion of gems."
Comparing GearScore to lack of gems is a pathetic compare since GearScore never meassured gems at all! That is one of the many criticisms many people including me had against GearScore!
ElitistGroup did have this feature. It inspected people, parsed gear, and noted you of missing gems/enchants which is not the same as correct gem/enchant! Nor glyph! So isn't equal to /inspect or Armory check (which was improved in Cata). GearScore, like ilvl, never took into account PvP vs PvE gear, gems, enchantments. You could get 6k gearscore as warrior with full mage cloth. A friend of mine and me did this on our warriors. We had a lolgearset which we'd use to teach children what a fail gearscore is. was; nobody uses it anymore. Thank $deity.
"Recently I got a couple of upgrades from the new dailies, as a result my reforges messed up. Should I need to reforge all my gear (knowing that the next troll heroic will give me enough points for the T12 chest and I will need to reforge once again) to fill the other players expectations? Or should I skip the reforges knowing that I overgear the dungeon?"
For raid: yes, you should. As a WoW player who isn't a M&S you should aim to get as good output as possible since such efficiency allows you to achieve goals quicker. You should hence push your limits, but in LFD nobody will complain about 1 or 2 piece of gear. And there isn't always a "best" reforge; some are situational or depend on content you play. In your example the gold spend on all those reforges wouldn't be worth it. But this is no compare next to the cheap gems, cheap enchantments, one-time reforges (with a few exceptions all to crit), and finally getting the glyphs you should have long ago whilst leveling the character up.
In other words, if you regem all your gear to get a mere 4 agility extra (and I know someone from top guild who did this in WotLK) then you are wasting a lot of gold for an improvement which won't give you a kill. Yet when we are speaking about 40 or 400 agility it is a different story. Well, now now, the examples I have read thus far here -to counter the argument against this slacker- are all those "4 agility" cases. One gem, one enchantment, a few reforges on optimized gear. Where do you draw the line? Entirely up to you, and I don't know, but I know for sure 2,4k output is way over the line! I know for sure someone who has 1 useful prime glyph and 1 useful major glyph is a slacker I'd be boosting. He has slacked ever since he reached level 50.
For the future, I'd keep it simple. If you'd just kicked an ungemmed, unglyphed moron - you wouldn't have gotten so many complaints.
Kicking an ungemmed, unglyphed moron who did better trash dps than your guildies...confuses people. (Besides, some readers may not be fully aware of the fact that warriors are highly dependent on fairly long cooldowns* and that blowing the cooldowns then meant that they'd be unavailable for Venoxis.)
*Assuming Blizz hasn't lowered them. Haven't dps'd on my warrior in a long, long time.
Hey man, what Larisa said: congratulations on the 1,000 posts.
As far as being a Goblin is concerned, I would have to agree with the first Anonymous post: "Goblin morality is that which is best for the goblin, not blind adherence to an arbitrary principle."
To prove it, you could take a month long hiatus and see if the progression continues. See if the ideals survive without the creator at the helm.
Play an alt for a month, sponge off a social guild, take up hardcore pvp.
You could say that doing this would be sacrificing your enjoyment of being in the guild, but it might be worth it for the sake of interest.
The problem with that post was that in the conversation you screenshotted, you looked like a complete jerk/idiot. The very first thing you did in his presence was talk about him in the third person in front of his face calling him a "retard." You clearly had no intention whatsoever of playing in the a group with him, so the conversation served no purpose other than to insult him and confuse him.
Objectively you look like a whiny baby from that conversation - and someone who is just looking for problems where they don't exist. He's there to play the game and kill some stuff and you are there to inspect gear and feel superior.
If you had posted "I kicked a guy who had no enchants and no gems from a group rather than trying to play with him. Here is why I think this was a reasonable thing to do:" then you could make your point.
But the conversation you posted doesn't even support the point you are trying to make, it just makes you look like a jackass. Let's be clear about something: This guy did not want to be boosted, he didn't think you were boosting him, and given the only evidence available (which isn't much evidence at all, but it was your guild member, not the guy in question who suggested using it) he was not being boosted.
What you are preaching is "don't boost slackers", but from that example what you appear to be living is, "judge people by their gear rather than their performance, try to be as offensive as possible, and rationalize your actions after the fact by ignoring objective evidence."
"Is there a way to both prove the idea to doubters and living it?"
The question centers around making converts to the belief that a Goblin mentality will always lead to success in the game (when also surrounded by other goblinish players). To prove this you put an amazing amount of effort in to creating a guild, enforcing rules, running pvp activities, and initially creating all guild Raid runs. I believe your question is that you cannot truly live by example the Goblinish way since you are exerting so much effort into these activities and thus non-goblins won't follow the example.
I don't necessarily believe this is the case. You alone cannot make a raid succeed. The other players sharing a like mentality as you make it succee along with you. I see two ways to demonstrate the proof without involving your self (essentially handling this from a scientific standpoint).
You must observe and not interfere with the experiment, completely and totally. One method is to allow the raid you normally lead/initiate to run without your intervention at all and show a guild first kill for a boss you had no hand in. Maybe your Rag kill? If need be require the Kill combat logs to be uploaded to WoL for the world to see your failings and triumphs. Since you cannot enforce this activity perhaps a payment of gold for this combat log is in order.
The other involves finding a "noob". An honest to goodness newb that is not dumb or proud of their failing. They just don't know. Invite them to the guild and track their progression, how they grow/change/develop into the best that The PuG requires them to be. All the opportunity to grow is there for them to take. Their failing is their own and other than the initial finding of the test subject you will have no hand in helping them. Just monitoring growth.
"Is there a way to both prove the idea to doubters and living it?"
If your evidence is epistemically sound, the doubters are at fault.
If you adjust your methods to appeal to epistemic ignorants, then you might convince them, but you'll end up causing more problems than you solve.
Just make sure that your stuff IS sound. For example, it can be pretty hard to check that your stuff isn't easily misunderstood. Your knowledge of what you mean serves as a scaffold, and can hold up shaky rhetoric. Don't assume you've made yourself clear until it becomes unreasonable to assume otherwise.
As to your specific examples:
"A goblinish player can instant-kick the ungemmed M&S. The blogger who preaches about goblinism cannot."
I disagree. You can and should. It's either goblinish or it isn't. If it is, then explain why. If someone doesn't like it, tough. They're just wrong.
If it isn't, you shouldn't be doing it anyway.
To clarify: is your goal to not group with M&S, or is the goal to kick only M&S? The strategies are different, but I can see goblinish reasons for either.
"A goblinish player does not need to lead Tol Barad, therefore does not need to care what morons with his guild tag do."
I disagree. If a goblin is using respect as a tool, then the goblin needs to maintain respect, whatever that requires.
For socials, respect is the goal, not a tool.
"A goblinish player does not need more gold than he spend. To prove that goldmaking strategies work I still collected several hundred thousand gold."
The point was to prove you can consistently make a very large amount, which required you to actually execute making a large amount consistently - well in excess of your character's needs.
Otherwise, you'd have to document all your expenditures to show that you weren't poor, even though you usually had about 0 gold in the bank. Showing a huge cash stockpile is way easier.
You know how I feel reading the people and you talking about converting people to goblinish?
I feel like I'm reading a PUA (pick up artist) website. That was some stuff I shouldn't have read as a teen and fought hard to get rid of.
Sure, alot of it was good, as to be a man and be responsible. But the techniques to connect with people were crap. While they had a point, alot of their stuff was brainwashing preventing you to be yourself.
Like some people here talking about converting people to goblinish, which is plain stupid, because it's not "goblinish" to use methods that are uneffective.
No it's not about conversion to a closed principle. It's about promoting effective methods in order to reach personal goals.
While I do agree that the ungemmed player may be sub-optimal, you have to agree that you have no proof that this will occur. But you speak as it if was the only outcome. Also, if you are the only one complaining. You are the one who should have left if anyone else didn't mind. Is the Goblin entitled to be the one who stays because he has more worth than M&S? Is he allowed to pass judgement on what is lower than him?
Much like how the PUAS judge the AFC. Alot of self called PUAs judge down the AFCs, the Average Frustrated Chump.
Only to make themselves feel good about themselves.
Alot of people said it better than me.
This blog attracts people with critical thinking. When you offer arguments while backing up your reasoning with objective facts, it's decent. Then again, reality has more than one way to reach a goal.
The Goblin way, while very useful and I do apply it to my life in order to be more efficient in a couple of areas, especially school and work, and also in business planning if I'm ever doing this, is not the only path to success as success is subjective to begin with. Someone who wants social success will not get enough with the Goblin. Not what I want.
I realise I must take what is useful out of "methods" and reject what will not give me the gain I want.
You're being stubborn on principle.
It's fine to kick someone. It's fine to assume his DPS may be under your guildie's, but also possible to be decent for the instance.
And finally, it's not fine to assume he will fail in bosse's AoE. You lack objective information to make that statement.
That's the problem.
Still, "no gems" doesn't correlate to "will stand in AoEs."
Re: Anonymous "Rigorous methodology is even more important when you are trying to prove something you believe to be true."
No, no it isn't. You realize we are not "proving" that he is bad. We are deciding what to do based on the given information that his gear is "bad." Given that the majority of people with ungemmed, unenchanted gear would provide bad performance (A postulated prior addmittedly, but one which should be easily disprovable if you think it's wrong and it is wrong. But the burden of proof lies with not me.) it is unnecessary for us to "prove" that he is bad. This is called a "prior." While it would be neat for us to have a categorized list of priors of how much % of a given type of gear set has a faliure riding behind the character, I am not aware of anything that provides such a list. So, I must make my own priors, and it is also sadly extremely difficult to unseat, since I only inspect if the person doesn't do well, it means if they have skill AND bad gear, I won't know of it. But if you volunteer to go do some research, I won't stop you, but I believe my current priors are more or less sufficient to the task.
Like if I were to randomly shuffle 6 red cards and 4 blues cards into a deck, and ask someone to guess which card I would draw next. (replacing the card after it's drawn) The correct guess would be to guess red every, single, time, since it yields the highest number of correct guesses, 60%, versus the 52% of guessing red 60% of the time and blue 40% of the time, and the 40% of guessing blue all the time. Given that my priors already expect idiots, it doesn't take very far for my to act as if the person in question would act like a blithering moron. But why the bloody hell would I bother proving such a thing?
When you have sufficient information to act, unless one's plans calls for delayed action, hesitating to choose is simply hesitation, and also worthless. As i've said before, a fast and correct decision is superior to a slow and correct on, and while part of that comes from deciding quickly, another part comes from acting with less information. If you wait untill you have complete information, you will never act. So the better decision makers ought to be able to make the correct decision with less information. As to why I think there are alot of idiots out there, it is because of subtlety. Despite being the strongest rogue spec (In terms of both damage done, though admittedly to single targets only, it loses in two target cleave to combat, and AoE to assassination.) while also carrying the strongest survival talents, Cheat Death + Eveloping Shadows = you only take 30% AoE damage AND you only die if you would be killed twice in a row. It nonetheless has a reputation of being the weakest spec, not just rogue spec, but weakest period. This is because most of the people running the spec are blithering MORONS. Apparently StateofDPS(.com) thought that the average subtlety damage was 15k DPS.(And those are taken from the HIGHEST performing parses, though addmittedly it does have a huge standard deviation, so the top 5% are all actually around 23k)But where do you think the standard deviation comes from? 60% of morons doing 15K damage and the 5% who's doing 9K with subtlety, and this is the "best." To show you how bad it is, that the damage I would do if I were wearing full ilvl 339 PvP gear, and using caster + str trinkets and rings,and a crossfire carbine rather than anythign with agility on it. THAT'S how horrible they're playing.
Is there a way to both prove the idea to doubters and living it?
Living a goblinish livestyle is not about your goals but about how to achieve these goals.
If I'm not much mistaken your goal wasn't just to life a goblinish life, but to spread it.
That, you do in an efficient way.
(For myself: I've found it more efficient to ignore one player with bad DPS in my DF-groups. Kicking someone would probably hurt the feelings of some people in the group, which would in turn lead to me getting kicked.
2-3 underperformers and I will try to get kicked ASAP.
And, to back up Coraline, if I would have seen the trash-DPS of your group I would get myself kicked as fast as possible from the group. Overall trash DPS is also an indicator for success in heroic dungeons. And 2 of 4 people <10k DPS, and tank at 4k DPS means normally wipefests. In this case my heuristic for finding bad groups would have failed, but normaly it's a quite good indicator.)
Note: the damage with PvP gear is 15k DPS, not 9K, that would be idioticly low. Just noticed that I worded it rather unclearly
On June 24, you posted about a heroic Halfus kill. From that post:
"If you check the armory of the firstkillers, you'll see properly enchanted and gemmed 340-350 gear. 2 of them were tanks, 2 healers. And Halfus HC hit the ground. Skill kills bosses, not gear. If you have, you can raid here!"
But when I checked the armory, Orosei (one of the tanks) was missing a number of gems and enchants. I pointed this out at the time but no one responded. (Out of curiosity, I checked his armory page today - he's in dps gear but still missing a number of gems and enchants.)
If your goal is to convince people then you need to be a lot more careful with what you claim, and you need to be a lot more consistant with your logic. If a person with missing gems isn't necessarily too stupid for a heroic raid boss (a demonstrated fact), then how do you prove that they are too stupid for a 5-man without, well, proof? At best, you sound sloppy, at worst, idiotic. Neither is very convincing.
Here is how i see the disconnect in this case.
On one hand, you want to have a guild where you can have a gaming atmosphere you can respect. You want to "live it".
On another hand, you keep stating that your real goal is to have this atmosphere exist in the whole world. And for this goal, you have to "preach it".
What happens is that "living it" seems to get in the way of "preaching it". Preaching it involves having a lot of people listen to your opinion with respect. On another hand, your personal brand of "living it" involves calling people that get in your way retards and trying to prove to them that their worth is nil. Which is not conductive with respect towards your opinion :/
The solution is to simply be less emo about everything.
So you had to kick an ungemmed and unenchanted M&S from party. The only thing he needed to know before the kick was the reason he was kicked for - for being ungemmed and unenchanted. Calling him retard on top of that doesn't help you preach it and i doubt it helps you live it.
Frankly, I for one have whole heartedly agreed with you and your assessment of the mouth-breathing, ungemmed moron wasting space in your ZG run.
I had to deal with a similar moron in a ZA run. we were 4/5 guild with one PUG dps. this dps was an arms warrior with no gems or enchants on his gear and pulled the same bullshit, but even on trash he was only pulling 5-7k dps. We promptly kicked his butt out of our group and got another PUG that worked out for the better for us.
My question to you nay sayers of this blog is this: why do you feel the need to defend fail? why feel sorry for someone who can't get it together in a simple game? If they can't even figure out a game as simple as WoW it goes to show they likely fail at life in general.
yes, it is just a game and you pay your 14.99/month to play but the other 59.96 - 359.76 says learn to play it right and quit dragging us all down or go find something else that you can do without holding back the rest of the group.
Jack has it totally right. The real message with social/asocial is about maturity.
In being a slave to "social", you worry so much about what others think, it prevents you from achieving, or often even setting your own goals. That's the adolescent condition.
But in countering social with the Goblinish "asocial", your behavior is still being externally controlled, only by a construct of your own making (must identify M&S or be unhappy).
Both ways often result in unhappiness which is easily blamed on other people.
You cannot ever prove objectively that doing things the goblin way (your way) is the best.
It should suffice that your ideas and experiments have garnered you amazing popularity as a blogger. You've likely affected hundreds of people to realize that being a slave to status and approval is not the road to achieving your goals.
Being asocial might be a better choice in some situations, but certainly not all.
Clearly the best way is to have understanding and insight of both, and learn the ability to choose how best to respond in different situations.
Happy 1000th, and great to see Larisa drop in. The fact that she digs you Gevlon, is one of your greatest assets.
Pretension: If you have a bias towards your claim then you must be that much more careful when testing it.
And there is a claim being made here: that gems are an indicator of player quality and a lack of gems is "heavily correlated" with performance. This claim is being made by you, not me, and I am under no obligation to you to prove that it isn't true. This claim is exactly my point of contention.
In this particular case, Gevlon claims that there was enough evidence of failure in the HC to *not even try* for 15 minutes and then hope to get lucky on the next random. That implies that he thinks a lack of a few gems/enchants (not all, just some), is so heavily correlated with being unable to complete an HC, as to not even be worth letting the guy play for 15 minutes when you can do *nothing* else anyway. That is an enormously strong claim and based on the two days of comment threads, most certainly not one which is widely held as self-evident.
And, most importantly to me, based on Gevlon's comments in the chat log, I don't believe that this was really his feeling at the time. His statement was "I don't want to carry this trash". IOW, he makes no judgment, instinctual or otherwise, about the likelihood of this player causing problems or not, he simply decided that he was inferior and objected on principle.
I claim such an arbitrary principle is decidedly un-goblinish.
Seriously lack of gems is retarded measure, i never gem/enchant gear i know i will remove this week, its a waste of reccources, the gains in dps never justify the costs as you wont benefit long enough from them especially as those gains aren't that huge
Gevlon, firstly, congratulations on your 1000 posts on Thursday (and this 1001'st post today).
Secondly, I'm not sure that it's entirely fair to say that you don't delete your critics, when I know for a fact that you have withheld a number of critical posts from myself in the past, but I do respect that you don't completely exclude Azuriel, Chewy, myself and others from the comments.
Finally: "Was my evidence enough to convince someone who is not already good?"
No, you gave no evidence, other than the lack of gemming - nothing on performance.
"I did not give him enough chances to prove himself good."
You gave him zero chances to prove himself good.
"If I would have thought about the blog, I had done that. However I'm not a blogger 24/7. While I play the game mostly for the blog, I can get carried away by it and play as a player."
And this is my criticism. When you start blogging about you getting carried away as a player, you are simply acting as another social. As an experienced blogger, you should be more aware of what you post, and prepare your posts accordingly, in such a way that demonstrates your point accurately and effectively.
Noone wants to read about Gevlon the player. People want to read about Gevlon the blogger with the controversial ideas. In this respect, you let them down. If you were in a 'player' mindset when the ungemmed warrior joined your LFD party, you simply should not have blogged about it - you could have kept the screenshot for a MotD or something instead.
"Is there a way to both prove the idea to doubters and living it?
"
Keep a blogger mindset while playing. You took screenshots, suggesting that you already do to some extent - now the trick is to follow it through.
You're very much an engineer Gevlon. The wheel can't be almost round, the gears can't have missing cogs.
I don't always agree with you but I've read a majority of your 1000 posts and come back to read more. I'm not a convert to your creed but I have found words of wisdom and ideas worthy of consideration. I'm not convinced by your methods but I have adopted some of your attitudes.
You're dealing with people not machines. Don't worry about proving everything and convincing everyone just do what you do and write about the same.
Interesting responses. Bristal makes a good summary of what I meant.
In my opinion, what's happening now is that you try and go to put yourself on top of M&S, not as player, but as a moral human being.
I don't think it's necessary to do that or even discuss this.
A true individualist does his own thing for his own success. He does not care about glory and power and being raised a statue. In fact, he might even be nihilist.
Now, what do you seek, Gevlon? What is your goal now? You wanted a successful guild where like minded people could come. That was amazing. Your older post offer good, constructive insight in how to live a successful life, despite having to deal with idiots (we are all someone else's idiot, though) and that helped me greatly.
But what are you doing now? Most of your posts are attacking enemies that aren't even there.
Let's be realistic: You won't cleanse the world of M&S. Like Terenas said: "There mut always be, a M&S King" .
The goal is to avoid them or/and develop techniques to deal with these situations effectively, recognize the causes and effects of such behaviour.
That's all fine and I agree with that. You can't like everyone, and everyone won't like you.
Now it just seems you want to show the world who the idiots are and ruin their lives for being retards.
You don't like them, fine. I don't either. That's why I choose who I hang with carefully and keep work interaction with collegues I don't like to a minimum.
Past that, I can't judge their way of life. As an individualist, I seek my gain, not their loss. I don't need to prove they make less than me, if I make what I need.
It's becoming a pissing contest. Nobody criticizes your guild's success. This proves the method works. This doesn't prove the amount of idiots in the world (irl or of warcraft) or the limits of their capacities.
Go back to your basics: Offer advice how to be successful and how to avoid idiots.
Don't try to humiliate idiots in public. It serves no purpose. You gain nothing from this. Their own incapacities will do them in faster than you think. Or even if they doesn't, who care? They do not pollute your group, you don't have to deal with them, that should be enough.
I'll leave this to you:
http://images.wikia.com/harrypotter/images/8/85/Magic_is_Might_Monument.jpg
But more important it means you are playing with someone who put effort into output (damage in this case); a non-slacker. [...] Someone who slacks so majorly on such simple things is probably going to slack in instances as well.
"Probably," sure. And yet both you and Gevlon are equating a causal relationship as if there has never been a fully gemmed and enchanted slacker. Do we even know whether Gevlon put in 100% of his potential effort into that heroic run? Was his "heart" into it? If Gevlon slacked but the run was completed anyway, what actual, literal difference is there between Gevlon and that "probable" M&S?
The outcome is then 14512. This is still 2,4k single target DPS increase single target. Approx 20% performance increase. The lacking glyphs account for 0,5k DPS. I find this substantial increase.
And what would be the DPS change that comes from a RAWR-perfect rotation on a simulated Pactwerk versus, say, a 0.5 second unnecessary delay between button presses because someone is unskilled or hesitating? Or, hell, the DPS difference simply in ZG's poison boss fight when you spend a major portion of the fight not attacking the boss? Ideally gems/enchants are 100% pure extra bonus on top of whatever damage you were already doing, but that is not entirely the case; more haste lets you fit in more casts for example, but that is assuming you press the button faster. Again, this guy (and by extension the group) would benefit more from him knowing the Fury rotation than being gemmed/enchanted. It shouldn't be an either/or situation of course, but both you and Gevlon are claiming he would automatically hold the group back simply because he is not optimized. That is not the case.
Actually, the interesting (probably anecdotal) statistic to look for is whether lack of optimization is even indicative with M&S at all. Everyone assumes the unenchanted player is bad, but obviously enchanted players are not automatically good. Would there not be M&S who dress for the occasion and remain M&S? What type of conclusions can you really draw if a significant portion of enchanted players ALSO die on poison boss, needlessly wipe the group, etc?
In any case, I do not inspect LFD filler because it is irrelevant to me whether they are geared or not - it only matters that they are more useful than an empty slot, assuming we can finish the dungeon with what we already have. It is your expectation of arbitrary standards that is at odds with the purported asocial nature you try to convey that I have issue with. Perhaps the shift in this blog's tone could be better described as going from Asocial Goblin to Social Goblin. It would certainly explain how and why Gevlon is ready to cut the nose to spite the face, e.g. act out of principal. The trash leading to the poison boss has to be cleared either way, so going AFK because you cannot deign to even "boost" him to the 1st boss is negative utility.
In my book showing up in a group situation unprepared, and unwilling to put in your best effort is just rude. I'm not judging your effort based on world top players. And i'm actually willing to keep a guy with 8k dps in an heroic as long as i see the guy is trying his best. But if you show up with 12k dps. Ungemmed and unenchanted, or in pvp gear. Or "gaming" the ilvl system. I'm putting you up for vote kick.
For me its not the overall speed of the run that matters. If that were the case i'd boot the scrub in decent gear unable to pull more then 8k aswell.
We are all playing a game here. And if you decide through any means to effect my enjoyment of the game in a negative way on purpose. Then you're not welcome in my team.
If you suck at wow, it doesn't mean you can't join lfd. I will not deny them content out of spite, and as long as i assess we will be able to get through the content with you. We will attempt it, don't get me wrong, i'd preferr you weren't in my group, but i won't kick you out if you are.
If you show up with the intention to get your gear with minimal effort, you are in fact expecting me to put in more effort then you, for your enjoyment. I won't do that.
This is different from the unskilled player that did enchant / gem his gear, That guy is putting in as much effort as i am. Granted, not very effectively, and with no decent result. But i'm sure he's trying his best. If next to that he is willing to listen to advice on how to improve, then he has just as much right to be there then i do.
But someone who is unwilling to put in the same amount of effort i do, is not welcome in group content. ( and i'm not taking my own effort as a benchmark here, but rather, the average amount of effort players put in. ) Match that, and your fine in groups in my book. Fall below, then please compensate for that effort without bothering strangers. As in find a guild, and run your 10 troll farm runs with them. Or at least bring one guildy along with exceptional damage done, to "compensate" for the damage you are not doing.
Benchmarks a 'la patchwerk are useless in these situations. They only apply in the decision to carry someone who deserves it. Just because you've met that benchmark doesn't give you the rigth to slack off, As a healer, the amount of effort i have to put in increases for every point of damage you're not doing. If you are unable to perform better, then so be it and i'll suck it up, out of the kindness of my heart. But i'm not going to work my ass off just because you choose to be lazy. If you want that, then you can pay me for it.
Small addendum:
I agree with Squish you have censored my posts in the past. I'm not complaining, it's your blog, but it isn't accurate to say that you never do.
In the spirit of fairness perhaps you meant that you don't intentionally try to present comments that only support your view which is an accurate representation.
@Fex "And if you decide through any means to effect my enjoyment of the game in a negative way on purpose. Then you're not welcome in my team."
Fair enough but in LFD with randomly selected players it is not really "your team". Don't you think that in this context you don't have born right to force your life philosophies on other players. Do not forget it is not just about your enjoyment of the game - there are other players too.
"If you show up with the intention to get your gear with minimal effort, you are in fact expecting me to put in more effort then you, for your enjoyment."
But what if that minimal effort is enough to clear the content smoothly? Do you always run 5-man heroics with raid consumables? Do you always put an effort required for HM raiding in 5-man content? Or you always at your best and require it from the others for the sake of principle?
P.S. I'm pretty sure that this comment will not show. It is a test if Gevlon still censors my posts.
You were completely right from a goblinish point of view to kick him immediately. If you were planning to later make an "example" of him on your blog, you did not fulfill the necessary pre-requisite of an example: evidence. Your ZG-leech post basically said "my gut says this guy sucks at dps, I kicked him, see how right I am?" You should have never posted it to begin with.
for any lfd group i run i use both a flask of flowing water, and either the + 90 spirit food or a mysterious fortune cookie.
I've been using consumables in group content ever since level 30. Wich i hit somewhere during bc.
All my gear is gemmed and enchanted with the best return on them in my mind. The only two top enchant's i'm not using are power torrent ( i use heartsong ) and the chest enchant, (i use + 40 spirit )
Heartsong appears to be slightly better suited to holy, and definately fits more with my playstyle. The reason i'm using + 40 spirit over the peerless stats, is that i preferr spirit over it. However, if my chestpiece was a purple, i would probably swap it out.
So yes, in fact i do always show up with raid consumables. I can use the free flask from alchemy, but even with access to that i still use the "expensive" + 300 spirit.
Next to that, any guildmember in an lfd group with me will also use a flask and + 90 buff food. Simply since i'll provide them if nescessary. As for not "my team" i generally run heroics with a guild tank, being a healer myself, And any number of dd currrently online in guild. The rest of the group is filled with lfd. Meaning that in most cases thats just one DD. In my book, that means it is "my team"
I never que without at least a guild tank, or tank i trust. Trusting lfd to provide a decent draw is in my experience not effective, and i don't like to waste my time.
regarding minimal effort,
Yes, it can be enough to provide a "smooth run" but in reality, if a DD slacks off it means i have to work harder / longer as a healer to get the group through the pull. So from my point of view, that slacking is not making the run as smooth as possible.
In the end i don't judge skill in a dd as much as "intent" If a player has his gear enchanted, i'm assuming he's doing the best he can, if his damage is low, i'll leave him alone. But where i'm using all consumables, and someone shows up that is not using any, doesn't enchant his gear ( not talking 1 missing enchant here, but rather no enchants present at all ) or gem, then in my book that guy is not putting in an equal amount of effort that the rest of the team does. Regardless of weather or not he's lowest or second lowest. If i had to pick who to kick, i'm more inclined to kick the guy without those over the guy trying his best but simply not able to do better. I feel effort should be rewarded.
I'm not that hard to please, i won't moan if you don't use consumables, or if your gear isn't min - maxed. Or your spec the most optimal. As long as you're putting in effort. No gems, no enchants = no effort put in.
As others have pointed out, if you are out to prove a point, then you must 'let nature take it course' ie show that ungemmed = wipefest.
Interestingly enough, the post about Donald Duck's nephews actually did support that popculture names = morons, and if written in another way ("I took in these three bozo's and let nature take it course, and voila, towermorons''), it would have been a good example of this.
@Fex (and similar):
Doesn't the Goblin philosophy mean that one values actual results above all else?
If someone puts in effort but his efforts are in vain, and the lazy/short-cut guy does bring in the results even when slacking in other areas, then the second guy is the one to go to in a Goblin's book, at least till he stops bringing in the results (and a new 'bringer of bacon' is sought).
Is that 'nice' behaviour, to ignore people's intention to do the best they can?
No, it is very unsocial, seeing people as tools instead of as persons, but the whole basic premise is that being unsocial and caring only about results is the best way.
Of course, caring about good intentions more than actual results is 'nicer', but it may just show that perhaps the whole 'unsocial = best results' premise isn't all what it is cracked up to be.
@ Fex: I don't think you insist that your guild tank or DD's reforge down to 6% hit in order to optimise their stats for LFD heroics, do you?
If not, then no, they're not maximising their performance, technically. The difference between raid and heroic hit%, around 240 secondary stat points (significantly more for caster DPS), has way more impact than the difference from a lack of gemming.
As for minimal effort, your attitude is flawed. Your argument sugests that you would rather someone who is gemmed and slacking off, than someone who is ungemmed and performing their rotations perfectly (performing equally in terms of damage done). Social irrationality.
@squishy:
"As for minimal effort, your attitude is flawed. Your argument sugests that you would rather someone who is gemmed and slacking off, than someone who is ungemmed and performing their rotations perfectly (performing equally in terms of damage done). Social irrationality."
#1 What's the correlation between effort/slacking in your example, and propensity to perform other undesirable actions in the run, such as trash talk, ninja looting, afk'ing, etc?
#2 As Gevlon has pointed out, in a world filled with socials, not tolerating anti-social behavior such as slacking has benefits even for goblins. The well known theory is that social behavior such as not tolerating slackers came about as a evolutionary solution to the problem of (slacking/cheating/stealing) in a communal living context, which is modeled in game theory as an iterated multiplayer prisoner's dilemma, with optimized solutions available through agreements to cooperate and ostracize. Since Social behavior evolved specifically to combat an exactly analogous situation to slackers in a pug, it is a bit illogical for you to claim that using social behavior as a pretext, in a pug, is obviously irrational. Some might claim it to be an intelligent use of pre-existing tools.
@ Kurt:
#1 - Your point only further validates why I would rather someone who doesn't have gems but puts their all into a run.
#2 - Same point applies.
I don't see how gemming and slacking off to achieve 12k dps (for example) is somehow better than not gemming and working hard to achieve 12k dps. If anything, it shows a better work ethic from the non-gemmed person.
Here's a question: Do you run 5-mans with flasks?
If you don't, are you choosing not to do so because you have no respect for other people and don't want to put in the effort to do the best you can? Or is it because you have set your own threshold for how much preparation and expense you are willing to put in when getting your VP?
If it is the former, then obviously you are a hypocrite. If it is the latter then how do you objectively justify your place on the scale compared with someone else's.
(Hint: Gems and enchants are *not* permanent, they last until you replace the gear, which someone running troll heroics with blue weapons is probably hoping to do very soon. The difference between gems, enchants and flasks is one of scale, not one of kind.)
(Hint 2: Flasks are worth 300 stats, that's 7.5 gems slots you are choosing to willfully leave empty)
@ squish "@ Kurt:
#1 - Your point only further validates why I would rather someone who doesn't have gems but puts their all into a run."
First off, your statement above is a contradiction, not having gems means one isn't putting their all into it. Second, replying to my reasoned post with a flippant reference to some false dilemma you have concocted is analogous to the 12k dps slacker in the zulroic you claim to despise.
I don't want either the 12k slacker or the 12k moron. I would kick one of them, probably whichever one seemed from their verbal utterances to be the most likely to hold the group back on a boss fight requiring some modicum of correct movement. Why it is so important to you to split hairs between types of failure is beyond me. It isn't a black and white subject, as many people exhibit multiple types in different degrees, and you reach no useful conclusions. In short, you are angry with Gevlon because he doesn't waste as much time as you do on irrelevant details.
@ Kurt: If you're saying that my analogy is bad, then you've taken my initial comments out of context.
My comments were in reply to Fex's comment:
"And i'm actually willing to keep a guy with 8k dps in an heroic as long as i see the guy is trying his best. But if you show up with 12k dps. Ungemmed and unenchanted, or in pvp gear. Or "gaming" the ilvl system. I'm putting you up for vote kick. "
This is what I was referring to as social irrationality - the idea that someone 'trying their best' by having gemmed gear, but being pretty poor (8k dps? seriously?) is worth keeping over the ungemmed, unenchanted 12k dps player.
Also note - I didn't say that being social was irrational. I'm one of the first in the queue to criticise Gevlon's belief that 'social = stupid'. I said that the idea of overlooking the higher performing person in order to get the lower performing but 'trying my best' person is socially influenced and irrational. There is a difference.
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