Greedy Goblin

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Helping the worst minority

For our last LFR raid Blizzard prepared a surprise:
The new thing is in the top. Despite we have not kicked anyone this week, there was a 2-hours cooldown on kicking that below tank crap. I contacted a GM and it's not a bug.

Of course a goblin always finds his way:
However it's a temporary fix. Soon every good or even OK-ish player will be on votekick cooldown and from that point the worthless morons can't be kicked.

Time for whining and pointless posting on forums how bad is it, citing that most players - even if not great - are capable of completing LFR raids (look at the damage meter, only 1 is below the tank and another 4 close to them). Forcing these people to carry the worthless M&S simply doesn't work as they are incapable to. A raid with half OK and half M&S won't complete LFR, we already almost wiped on DW, as we couldn't kick the "i do as i wanna" kiddies who kept attacking the wing, providing us a wonderful tendrils+corruption+bolt combo on the platform of Nozdormu.

It is a conscious decision of Blizzard that they don't simply aim for the averagely bad players, they have a "no moron is left behind" policy, LFD/LFR is open to even the most terrible leech with no limit, not even a very low one.

What can a goblin do who still gears up? Simply use the system as intended. /follow healer and go AFK! In a few hours the raid will complete while you cleaned your room, ate or read a book. Just don't go far from the computer as you have to move every now and then to prevent becoming AFK and above all, you must press need on loot. If they want people to carry 0 DPS players, why not be one of those carried?

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

2 hour vote-kick cooldown? Nice.

As for your solution, I find queuing as a needed role (healer) and then doing whatever I feel like doing to be a fun alternative. There's always 1-2 others queued as healer, but not healing, who preform worse, so no one ever bothers to deal with me.

Anonymous said...

That 2 hour thing seems totally random. I know when you zone into a dungeon its 15 minutes but 2 hours for an LFR? Most LFRs dont even last that long.

Being a moron towards a tank is certainly a good way to get kicked. I was tanking a 5man and a ret pally decided he was going to pull everything. I got tired of picking up his mess and his DPS that was below mine, so I vote kicked him with the message "Let the tank pull."

Given I was 2/5 group with a friend, the healer and the other DPS were obviously tired of his moronic self too - instant kick.

Ermak said...

This probably will be the reason for me to solo-queue for LFR. For VP of course. Can't care less for PvE gear anymore.

Ermak said...

FWD: Also I will accumulate the kick immunity and send you raids' responses.
Oh, and should I or should I not add in /ra "Cower, puny mortals! For I am invinsible!!!"?

Andru said...

The 2h kick timer is a combination of kick protection if you get kicked a lot, and an 'abuse' of the tool.

This is simply Blizzard being Blizzard. I don't know how they fail to realize that if you're letting people get away with being idiots, then sooner or later, everyone will behave like an idiot.

Anonymous said...

Haha, Andru just stroke gold with his remark - sooner or later, this system will be used only by idiots and leeches.
Unfortunately for me, I can't use the "goblin solution" since my goal is not to accumulate gear, but rather to play the game. I guess most people who can't/won't play with a fix schedule are in the same position.

Tithian said...

I think you were fortunate that only 1 person was below the tanks.

On the last LFR I was, the tank was #6 on the dps charts, on Madness. When one of the dps listed the dps charts, people told him to 'rage less' and 'l2chill'.

Anonymous said...

@ Andru
Agreed. Along the lines of "If you give people money for doing nothing, soon everyone will be doing nothing."

Happy Forum said...

Haha, your last paragraph reminds me of John Galt and also that "Strike of Rand" post from a long time ago.

I wonder what Blizzard will do as more and more of the good players stop using LFR. If raids are nerfed to the point that average players can carry baddies, WoW raids will become really boring for people that successfully raided in Vanilla, TBC, and in early Wrath.

Cenira said...

I think the problem is a misconception. Blizzard made LFD and LFR mostly for bad players.

Every competent player is able to join a raiding guild or have some good players added to his friend list for dungeon runs.

It's the morons that need those tools to see the content. So LFD and LFR mechanics are made to favor moros and slackers.

You can argue that they must not see the content before learning to play, but Blizzard thinks otherwise.

Kelindia said...

LFR truely inflates the M&S problem since there are no longer guildies they are trying show off for or any "friends" they will listen too. The result is obvious. They just do whatever they think is fun.

This problem however has been a recurring theme in most social guilds that want to raid. They end up with a mixed bag of players and find themselves struggling to carry the 1-3 useless players along.

Myself if I was in control of Blizzard I would redesign normal modes based off the assumption that there will be two useless people with the raid. The idea is that in every raid you provide that need for two almost mindless jobs. While the rest of the raid is dodging fire and not standing in the bad you have 2 people on some sort of turret shooting down adds. You could easily have them sitting aoeing down incoming adds with ease. Have them running in a circle clicking the laser to knock down the shield of some boss. The idea is to allow the decent raid leader of a social guild to be able to move the M&S they are carrying into less stressful roles while the rest of the raid can still be challenged by mechanics that would normally wipe them because of the design focused on output that M&S always fail at and conversely the entire raid.

LFR however will just become worse over time unless Blizzard puts in some sort of behind the scenes matchmaker to group players on a sort of PvE score. In addition LFR bosses would have to change to some degree based on the PvE score. Perhaps adding a satchel of goods that would reward player proportionately money wise for their score would prevent people attempting to underhand the system to get easier bosses.

Anonymous said...

@cenira
Not every competent player are able to join a raiding guild.
There are competent players that are only playing early in the mornings. And so far (at least on those servers I am playing on) I have not seen any raiding guild raiding from 6 to 8 in the morning.

The only way to be able to feel some kind of raid spirit is to use LFR (if you can call that a raid)


In principle I agree with Gevlon. Anyone not able to beat the tank on DPS should be out.
But I am getting much more easygoing the older I get. Can't really kick half of the dps's just because they can't beat the tank.

For 5 man I am satisfied if at least 2 dps's beats me.
Before I would have gotten into a fit about this, but it takes shorter time to just ride the flow. If it is too bad, I just leave.

Of course that goes the other way also. I have absolutely no problem anymore to deck my dps alts in PVP gear ungemmed/unenchanted to get the ilvl needed to enter the new 5 mans.

Péter Zoltán said...

OH GREAT!
In LFD it's even worse. I just got a guy yesterday who contributed a grand total of 0 damage and died in the first minute on the first boss, then went AFK without saying anything. Oh yes he said "can i get a res?" when we proceeded to kill the last trashpack before the endboss.
We could not kick him up until the end of the run because there was a timer. It didn't matter that his contribution was exactly 0, it didn't matter he was flagged AFK 90% of the time.
I wonder why.

Anonymous said...

There is only 1 Dwarfny on Armory, from Agamaggan:

Character Audit
9 empty glyph slots
9 unenchanted items
4 empty sockets in 3 items
Missing Ebonsteel Belt Buckle

I would still vote 'no' to votekick if I wasn't a plate DPS or rolling on his tier (depending on which bosses are ahead). This is because he is not competing with me on loot.

The other day I had a mage who cast TW on Hagara trash, then spammed /ra I popped Time Warp and you cannot kick me! He kept repeating it. He then ninjapulled the boss. I suggested we wipe and kick the bugger to teach him a lesson (deprive him from VP) but the majority of the raid disagreed. we killed Hagara and guess who received loot? I still made a ticket about him because I consider his action harrassment. Not because he performed his action (people make silly mistakes, cat jumped on keyboard) but because he was gloating about it making crystal clear his intentions, and spamming. My ticket got past 1st line after which I don't know what actions were taken due to privacy laws.

"For 5 man I am satisfied if at least 2 dps's beats me."

I hope you realize some tanks do insane AoE DPS, while some DPS are specced for single target (spec or specific talent points). Fire mage, for example, is excellent AoE (bit RNGish) while arcane is not. Arms warrior is good AoE, but can pick talent points specific meant for single target DPS. Plus, a tank can carry (some) DPS gear. Our DK, one of our DPS whores, actually prefers to tank in his PvP gear (he has the PvE gear for raid) to get higher DPS to finish quicker and as he puts it "to give the healer something to do as well". Obviously his mastery and avoidance is lower, but his health is higher.

I've also seen resto shaman, atonement priest outdamaging DPS, and shadow priest outhealing healers. I'm not only talking about people who perform different role here.

Last but not least if you have normal or heroic gear you should be among the best performing players. If you're not, YOU are slacking!

Bristal said...

Agree w/ anonymous, tank DPS means nothing. It's not an accurate bar for DPS performance when the ilvl gap is so high, although it is a nice excuse for yet another tired QQ post about LFR.

Now you're bitching that you can't throw the babies out of the baby pool?

Anonymous said...

I don't have a problem with kicking AFK players, but if I was on that run I would have most likely initiated a vote kick against you and reported you for a violation. By threatening to hold the raid hostage until you get your way, you have sunk lower than the sub par DPS.

If you want to set arbitrary rules for your raid, don't use LFR. I consistantly perform in the top 5 DPS, and would rather have a player that, while not putting out "acceptable" DPS, is following the mechanics of the raid.

Abuse of the vote kick by you and your ilk is what is causing the extended cooldown.

nehunter said...

What's the goblin wisdom in what you are doing?

You made the run longer! Why did you even cared?

Unless the guy is a jerk, there is no logical reason to kick someone from LFD/LFR!

Anonymous said...

One bad dps isn't going to wipe your raid. It's just not worth ranting about or kicking him, imo, as if you expected everybody in a random group to always perform well.

I was in an LFR the other day and it wiped on spine because one of the tanks didn't understand the fight and a couple dps insisted on attacking the corruptions. It was bad and it wasn't going to be any better on madness if they somehow managed to get spine right. So I left.

Going in with a premade means you have some interest in staying no matter how bad it is. Going in solo means leaving the group rather than trying to fix it.

cenira said...

"@cenira
Not every competent player are able to join a raiding guild.
There are competent players that are only playing early in the mornings. And so far (at least on those servers I am playing on) I have not seen any raiding guild raiding from 6 to 8 in the morning.

The only way to be able to feel some kind of raid spirit is to use LFR (if you can call that a raid)


In principle I agree with Gevlon. Anyone not able to beat the tank on DPS should be out.
But I am getting much more easygoing the older I get. Can't really kick half of the dps's just because they can't beat the tank.

For 5 man I am satisfied if at least 2 dps's beats me.
Before I would have gotten into a fit about this, but it takes shorter time to just ride the flow. If it is too bad, I just leave.

Of course that goes the other way also. I have absolutely no problem anymore to deck my dps alts in PVP gear ungemmed/unenchanted to get the ilvl needed to enter the new 5 mans."

I suppose, since you can find people through LFR at those hours, it means there are enough people to form a guild. You can start it, and invite people to change realms.

Another suggestion is since you play only early in the morning to change from Europe to US account, or otherwise.

I don't disagree with Gevlon. I'm just writing my observations.

Twoflower said...

Funny how you still think that LFR is serious content. You and your oh so great guild. Why not raid DS with them instead ?

Oh, i forgot, you are still busy clearing LFR and t11 heroics.

Your raiding decisions are just fail. And you even think that you are good. Ridiculous.