Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Enforcing a strategy

I caught a player on slacking on consumables. He believed he was not slacking. Yet, I won't raid with him until he pays his 300G (actually 96 that remained of it). He thinks I'm just seeking scapegoats and wasn't even right demanding the consumable.

Maybe. But the point of this post that he was a harmful slacker even if he was right about the consumables.

There is one, optimal strategy. We must find it to be successful. There are two ways of not finding it: if everyone are ignorant to the solution (or even to the existence of problem), or if those who are not remain silent.

Since I had the strategy discussion about RBG, we are keep winning. We have not played enough to reach our new equilibrium rating, as people have the annoying tendency of "having to go" after they maxed their CP and in the summer it's not easy to replace them. The posts were created after someone clearly expressed that he wants some form of discussion of strategies, more than just a "who goes where" 1-min chat before the game. He left the RBG when I couldn't provide that right there. I originally started the series just to get him and others like him back. But the thinking itself while writing them and the comments created much better strategies than we had.

The point is that we would not have these strategies if he would be content with our previous ones. He believed we need organized discussions and stood up to this idea.

But would he be so eager to change the system if I'd let him play his way? I don't think so. People usually content with the tolerable bad. He surely thought our strategy is bad for long, but did not speak up until I caught him deviating from it. He would probably go with "the strat sucks, the leader sucks, the others fail, but I have my CP so who cares?" if I let him. I did not. I left only two options: carry out a sucky strat or standing up against it.

If I'm right, the guy in the raid slacked. If he is right, he let us wipe with a bad strategy. Either way he deserve his -300G.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Details are missing.

He was not slacking on consumables in the sense that he had none enabled. Au contraire. He did not have the consumables the raid leader (you) demanded; he had +300 primary stat instead of prismatic + battle elixir.

The question is whether the prismatic + battle elixir is stronger than +300 primary stat. Many in raid disagreed with this.

The person in question was one who received the least amount of damage taken WITHOUT the consumable prismatic. This either means he was playing well, or that his spec had a lot of damage mitigation, or both. In such a case, meters are logs are useful. To put things more into perspective he was using his +300 int to do more damage while at the same time not causing harm by taking too much damage. Such personal optimization should be allowed in a raid with free thinking, liberal people who are able to think for themselves and who care about the end result and use PROPER statistics to measure performance.

Did he do the right thing? Arguably not since you enforce a 300g penalty on a rule which he proven to be inefficient for his class/role/playstyle. He could have left the raid at the moment he found out your strategy is sub-optimal. He could've left when he did not agree with your consumable policy but then he would not been able to prove your point. If he did leave mid raid, he'd not collect any fail gold from others who failed. If I were him I'd adapt to your policy when caught red handed and would've left during the break to collect fail gold, and think twice before doing this encounter with the strategy raid leader demanded.

He was also not the only person who "slacked" on consumables, and we never tried various strategies other guilds use on this fight such as 2 tanks, having DD target legs and have a few switch when adds come (AoE on multiple adds, single target on Spark which is all pre-defined in bossmod) among various other suggestions. Thousands of other groups have killed the boss successfully using said strategies. Why not The PuG?

Sum said...

After reading the post I was completely lost as to what had happened, not being in your guild. The anonymous comment cleared that up nicely.

You can't say someone is "slacking" if they choose to go for different flasks than you as the RL had told them to. They are "disobeying". That can be just as bad of course, the difference is mostly in if they did it openly (and let you decide to boot them / keep them) or in secret.

Why is your raid taking too much damage? Bad driving? Prismatic elixirs _may_ help on this. Adds going down too slow? Prismatic elixirs will make them go down slower.

In the end I don't see that Rhyo requires prismatic elixirs, if things go like they should the raid damage is not that bad and good dps makes things go faster.

Babar said...

It's the raid leaders responsability to create a climate where people feel they can truly speak up. At the same time, raiding would be less than optimal if everyone would make suggestions and comments after every pull, and you'd end up using the majority of your time on talking, rather than pulling.

As for trying different tactics, this is what really shows how successful a guild can be. A strategy on Tankspot is only showing the way one specific guild killed a boss, and that strategy may not even be optimal. And even if it was, there can be various reasons why it won't work as well for your guild (setup, individual skill and so on), so experimenting on progress raids is vital in my opinion.

Since I'm not hardcore raiding anymore, and just doing normal modes in a 10 man setting, I have an easy rule of thumb when raid leading. If we're taking way too much damage to handle, or we're not close to reaching a dps check, or the tank is getting one-shotted or whatever, I know we're doing something fundamentally wrong. You can't know this if your doing progress on hard modes with little information available, but you can when doing normal modes. So far this rule of thumb has proven useful.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for standing up for me guys but unfortunately I was using the +80 Alchemy flask not the +300 one.

I did have some draconic flasks on me but choose not to use them because the raid leader aked me to use the prismatic elixer which confused me (in hindsight I should have used the +300 version).

After the raid I made a stack of Prismatic Elixers and some battle elixers to use with it, if he wants me to pay a fail fee thats fine too since I was the one who neglected to bring enouth consumables in the first place.

-Yuuno.

Anonymous said...

buffood minimal requirement implies that lack of dps is the issue

this is rarely the case
meanwhile its bothersome to keep food in stock as materials are often not found in ah and farming is nothing i would do

another point is that fairness is if everyone must contribute the same, that means fl overgeared player dont have to buff and flask to dps as much as fresh 359 people

you could demand everyone to give their best but then i would demand more of the pot as #1 dps with 6 to 8k difference to lowest dps

Anonymous said...

Yuuno, this is not about you, it's about someone else. The person in question DID use the 300 int flask instead of the elixir that Gevlon ordered him to use, and was punished for it. However, he refused to pay the whole sum of "fail"-gold, which is why this issue has now been made public on this blog.

IrOn TuRtLe said...

A very vague and ambiguous post, an anonymous comment going into much more detail, a confession and apology, and then the anonymous commenter saying no, this is about someone else. What on earth am I to make of this?

The guild rules state:
"RL is also authorized to fine 30G/person (300/750G) for the pot from those who do something stupid wiping the raid." Stupid is a vague term, but in this blog it generally has meant "stand in fire", "attack the wrong target", "accidently pull mobs", etc.

Did this mysterious raider cause a wipe through stupidity? Anon says no, and Gevlon ... is accusing him of not arguing for a different strategy? I think? Whatever the case, it sounds like Gevlon is imposing a fine which exceeds the authority granted by the guild rules. As GM, he of course has the authority to do whatever he wants, but if that's going to be the system then why bother having rules at all?

Anonymous said...

People tend to think of their own actions in a situation due to rational thought, yet others actions are the cause of emotional thought. I find it hard to believe that someone would not speak up solely because they want to slack.

When did he make the change and how long had the change been in place?
Perhaps he was testing whether or not the change would be influential over the course of several attempts. The null hypothesis here is that there is no substantial effect from changing +300 primary stat to prismatic + battle elixir. You have also yet to reject the null hypothesis as does he. Yet, you are the one accusing him of doing something stupid when you have no proof showing what he was doing was actually in error. You also did not show, in any way, that he was deliberately not informing you and that was causing the raid to perform worse. A reason he may have brought it up when he did was because you had brought it up first and he was justifying his actions even though he couldn't conclusively show that his idea was correct. You merely pointed out a deviation. You did NOT point out "slacking."

Knowledge about anything that requires proof and testing is not obtained instantaneously. Your final line in your post ignores the possibility that he had not conducted enough testing in order to show that his idea was correct.
Your final statement is a false dichotomy as I have demonstrated that you presented two options yet more than two were actually available. It is possible that neither of those options is true and your fine would not be justifiable.


As a side note:
When does the responsibility for determination of strategic improvement fall on the raider because to try something new? Is it be the raid leader's job to instruct people to try something different? If that is not the case then my previous point about the false dichotomy still stands. If that is the case, then would you be the ignorant one in this scenario for not fully considering a possible change?

Ðesolate said...

"as people have the annoying tendency of "having to go" after they maxed their CP"
Yes would have been happy if this would have been me, I always had to lave before reaching the cap.

Well, anyway I am looking forward next saturday and sunday. The 3 / 3 wins last week gave me something back I missed since BC.

The "discussion" about the 300g fee. I have seen quite some debates with gevlon. And I must say that he always took critism serious (well maybe a bit aggressive in arguments, but mostly vice versa...) and he admitted beeing wrong, when beaten in argument.

Everybody in the Guild knows that the rules are hard and that they may punish little failures. But that is why people are in this Guild. Who of the member wants people who "accept" beeing "tolerant"?
Two options:
a) discuss
b) follow
And tribute to anyone who admits his failures.

Azuriel said...

There is no such thing as "one, optimal strategy" in the binary terms of killing the boss. What is the optimal way of eating a sandwich? Eating it slowly starting from the corners, or stuffing the whole thing in your mouth? There may be one ultimate way of killing the boss in the fastest, most efficient way possible (although I doubt it). But you aren't going for that ridiculous goal, you are going for a boss kill regardless of how sloppy it is achieved - a kill is a kill.

The question is: would you have charged a fail fee for not using consumables if the boss died? Probably not. Was the lack of consumables for this one raider the principal and only cause of the wipe? Probably not. Is the "principal of the thing" vis-a-vis obeying your orders in a military fashion the only way to "keep people in line" or otherwise incentivize them to give their best efforts each pull? Probably not.

By the way, is there no fail penalty levied on the raid leader for bad strategies? Giving players non-optimal strategies is way more damaging than not popping a flask.

Pheredhel said...

@Anonymous: I'd sgree with that. Not for "strategies in the making" but for any fail such as not noticing a Boss changed, wipes due to bad decisions, or even in addition to people who fail, if they are not kicked in time. This is actually something that should really be implemented as raidleaders are PAID.
This would prevent the raid to pay for fail leaders.