Greedy Goblin

Friday, November 11, 2011

Why bash M&S in premade BGs?

Many people asked what's the point in smashing random terribles with premades. I mean there is definitely no challenge involved, honor points are completely useless and conquest/hour (using the 25CP for first win) is much lower than playing 2v2 arena at 1000 rating.

There is obvious purpose for new players or alts gearing up, but half of the team needs nothing from honor. Are we being "heplfull peeps" or "having fun pwning n00bs". I can't speak for others, only for myself.

I hate M&S (surprise!). I hate the system where these morons can get anything their heart desire. It's a system and not a game. Switching to another MMO wouldn't help. Not even EVE. The common social thinking is that every person is a unique snowflake and deserve respect just for existing, rewards for showing up.

While the good gamers think of themselves as the "elite" and the features they use (HC raids, RBGs) as "top game", while the common features (5-mans, random BGs) as "easy mode", they are wrong. Their features are just ghettos, away from the "real thing" where the "fun" is, while they and their playgrounds are considered lame and no-lifer. The game companies go great lengths to make sure that playing in the ghettos give nothing unique or even remotely useful rewards or tools. The full conquest gear can be gained by running arenas at 800 rating + winning a random BG every day. The conquest gear will be outperformed by next tier honor gear, just like the HC raiding gear will be beaten by valor point rewards. For these reasons RBGs are rarely used. While I enjoy playing RBGs, they have absolutely zero community relevance. I will not convince anyone about anything playing it. I wouldn't convince anyone about anything if my team would be world first. They would just dismiss it as "no lifer virgins playing 24/7 from their moms basement".

They can't dismiss a 0:5 Arathi. They can't dismiss a 10 mins SotA defense where they couldn't cap a GY or break a second wall, followed by a 2 mins attack where no demo death. OK, they can blame "teh n00bs whit no gear" for it. But they definitely can't dismiss their own 15:0 death:kill result. The horde of our server left Tol Barad, we have to wait in the queue despite 2x more horde here. Why? They got enough of matches where they can't score a single kill.

This weekend will be Isle of conquest weekend. I'll recruit from the whole server with "no ilvl needed, just 2K resi (crafted items) enchants, gems, brain". I will show to the people - just as I did in TB - that thinking, playing for objectives, not running after the first red letters provides wins. Landfall wins.

Instead of playing in the "no lifer ghetto", I go where the "fun" is, and own the place. People must learn that they can't fool around, act as they feel like. If they do so, they will be smashed like trashmobs. They must face with the experience that a group of goal-oriented people is not just "better", it's smashing them. To win they must act effectively and join a group that does likewise. In the age of premades everyone must adhere to some standards. Not high ones, mind you, but some standards. "Stay at the objective", "gem your gear", "don't wear greens" isn't much to ask.

Actions have natural consequences. Being effective leads to winning, fooling around leads to losing. Game companies try to break it by promoting leeching. People bot BGs because even the totally worthless bot can win games as he is carried. We can't do anything about it if it's not standing in one place but run into combat. The "team" can't punish failers or even blatant saboteurs. The pre-made is different. You act stupid, you get kicked: no more easy wins for you, no more massacre, no more achievements.

In short: Devastating enemies is fun. Socials want "fun". I prove them that "play to win", "be efficient" and "ignore morals" provides fun, while rejecting these provide fun to others at their expenses. For me, it's spreading my ideas in a way that can't be ignored. I literally beat goblinism into their heads.

Today the Isle of Conquest 40-man BGs are coming. It's mine!

This is also a message to Blizzard. Obviously none of us would bother doing random BGs if they would be what they should be: beginner content. By purposefully devaluing Conquest rewards, and even providing conquest points for random BG, there is no point going anywhere else. To make things even more obvious, in a week or two the honor from random BG will give better gear than the conquest gear of today. They want us to play random BG, they want to avoid the easy mode being looked down. Well, they get what they want: we play random BGs. They know that players follow rewards, if they provide proper rewards for playing competitively (as opposed to massacring randoms), we will. Till then, dear M&S of random BGs:

Prepare yourselves, the bells have tolled!
Shelter your weak, your young and your old!
Each of you shall pay the final sum!
Cry for mercy; the reckoning has come!
HAHAHAHAHA!

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

" they and their playgrounds are considered lame and no-lifer"

Yup. And who do you think considers them to be that, and why? (It's not the ultra casual players, they honestly don't care.) It's not your M&S who desperately want to be hardcore like those HC guys.

(tbh I think there's a good argument now that the HC are quirky eccentrics in WoW -- after all, don't they realise that gear resets every patch so there's no point raiding 4 times a week just to get /slightly/ better gear.)

Steel H. said...

I still don’t understand why you aren’t playing EVE though. Care to elaborate? For starters, you have a much more complex economy, and with your money skills you’d make a killing. And PVP there has real impact, and affects the entire world, since it’s a single realm. All your ganking in random BGs will only affect a small and random portion of people from across separate realms, and I just can’t see it having any lasting impact. “ Oh noes, there’s a premade roaming the queue on whatever battlegroup from whatever realm owning people once in a while…“. Or am I not understanding the bg queue system? How many people out of the total pool will you reach? In EVE, such organized efforts impact everyone in the world in ways that are inescapable (http://www.kugutsumen.com/content.php?216-Goonswarm-Shrugged-The-Gallente-Ice-Interdiction). And if I remember correctly, at some point you wanted games where player actions could change the world.

Anonymous said...

Sorry for off-topic but I have to point something out to you:

The common social thinking is that every person is a unique snowflake and deserve respect just for existing, rewards for showing up.

You have one serious character flaw and that is your lack of the most basic human decency. There is nothing wrong feeling contempt for single people that proved themselves to be useless; BUT every human being as such, just for existing, deserves respect. This basic human respect is nothing that anyone has to earn with actions.

Greetings from Germany
Ralf

(first sentence first article of our basic law "Human dignity is inviolable.")

Anonymous said...

Still, you really think that a random group with random setup (sometimes without healer) has equal chance to win against a premade, just because there is a "skill" factor? Individual skill has nothing to do with organized team playing, you should know this. Playing a premade has it's point, being more orgaznized than the other team. Organization: win. You should know that in randoms there COULD be non m&s, in fact, there are. In a 5 man hc there COULD be skilled players, but you constantly talk and judge about territory of wow that you don't know. You live in a warm cozy guild, and you refuse to move out of it to look around, you just talk from inside about the "outside" world. You are getting disbelieving, demagogue.
I PuG like everything since I am in this game, and yes, I've met with terrible people, but (as you even said earlier) most of them are just... average. They won't pull out 25-30k in Zul'Aman, but they do what you ask them for, they will pull 15-17k dps, and they won't die in the fire, just burn a bit. Average. Same in PvP: you ask them to guard towers, so they do. If they have a leader, they are pretty efficient, this is what REAL random bgs lack: leading.
I have the feeling that even your premade is lacking of individual skills, they just do what you say. But at least someone tells what to do, so you win. And after 2-3 bg experience, even a dog could do it (I go there, I do this, rinse repeat). If you would be right, you could win with the same people in a rated once they are geared.
Devastating the enemy could be fun, but I don't see any more fun in it than, for example making an addon that nerfs Baleroc hc hp to 1000, and you practically 1 shot it. Wow! Fun! Getting loot is fun isn't it? HOW to get it (especially as a well known "preacher" on the net with a used-to-be interesting project) is not.
Remember when you said one people acting can define (well, amongst socials) the whole guild? You are the leader, you define your guild the most. If I would plan to join into your guild, reading these I would change my mind, because who wants to play with a bunch of cheater?

Anonymous said...

Game companies don't value people for being special snowflakes. They value them for paying $15/month. It is in their self-interest to give them something they want to pay $15/month for. A good or fair or just game is pretty irrelevant.

In my battle group, alliance tends to lose, except for AV. So I actually welcome a 0:5 loss. My favorite is to join a blowout well in progress. Wins are usually better than losses but a very quick loss pays better than a long win. It is much more efficient hk/hour doing a daily with a quick loss. There is even less incentive to get too worked up about the outcome if it is not in doubt.

Besides, it is an unrated BG. Blizzard has been quite clear and frequently emphasizes that serious PvP is in arenas or rBGs. So no logical person is going to be too worked up about winning or losing an unrated BG (at max levels; daily BG can level pretty well.) Especially since the most efficient way to get conquest points is to lose enough 2v2 arenas to be able to win 10 matches. If you start on Monday you can have 384 shoulders/head, which are better than 353 PvE, in a day.

Admittedly I am in a PvE guild, but I never hear of anyone who does unrated BGs except when they are bored or leveling. I just can't see people taking unrated BGs too seriously.

Andru said...

spotlight effect
n.
The tendency to believe that other people are paying closer attention to one's appearance and behavior than they really are.

You talked about this in one of your really old posts. You are falling for it, despite warning us about it.

Tol Barad took you ... what, one year to get to this point. I can't speak for now, but when I still played, TB fights which were not led by you had an uncanny tendency to fall apart.

Random BGs run in the tens at the same time. You can't lead every single one, you don't have another year to waste on beating strategy into the ghetto inhabitants heads.

And the effort is for nothing! Random BGs right now are populated by newbies(who don't know better), M&S (who can't go anywhere better) and PvP undergeared people(who can't be anywhere better, yet).

Newbies will learn/stop being newbies and go to rated BGs. Some M&S will change their ways and go to rateds/arena. Undergeared people will get geared even without your 'help' and go somewhere better.

The Random BGs will remain a getto because they are inconsequential. Everyone who leaves for better 'neighbourhoods' is replaced by a new M&S. When they leave, they take their entire capital with them (strategy, knowledge, skill). The new people bring NOTHING to the ghetto.

This means that there must always be some 'helpfull peep' in RBGs to beat strategy and the like into their minds. Forever.

You already did this bloody experiment with AV and covered it in your old posts. You came to the conclusion that battle-ground wide strategies iterate over quasi-similar states, reverting to their previous equilibrium once the disrupting agent stops its action.

You're going to try and falsify that conclusion and tell us that finite effort can achieve time-stable results?

I severely doubt it. Even common sense says it. If a person is good enough to follow strategy and the like, they would be somewhere else, not in a Random BG. Every ghetto inhabitant dreams to escape. The good will escape, the bad will still be there.

Gevlon said...

@Andru: what is different here is that premades are self-sufficient. People don't run premades for "doing something great", they do to get honor or daily one win or whatever. Doing premade provides fast win.

There are thousands of randoms running every day, so no doubt that my personal effect is near zero. However people will follow this advice, not because I told or because they agree with my philosophy, but because they want honor and win.

I expect running pre-mades to become the standard of running random BGs soon.

Anonymous said...

The fact remains that instead of taking your own kind (premade versus premade called rated BG) you are cheating the system by joining random BG with more than 5 people. The unfair advantage lies in the fact that opponent is not able to do the same. Now, as I understand it, you are even abusing the system furthermore to kick people who you call are failing? If enough of those write a ticket for game mechanic abuse, I know a few people from a guild who are getting a warning on their account.

As for your accomplishments being 0:5 Arathi, 2 min SotA offense with 10 min defense about which the Germans would've been proud if they pulled this back in Normandy I have accomplished that in non-premades, many times. I am not impressed you are able to pull such off in random BGs because I know there are terrible, undergeared, slacking drones/bots frolicking around through the BGs.

You will not easily find those in a rated though. Instead, show us you are able to get a high battleground rating without the help of voice chat, without fixed attendance, without a static composition (wasn't that your previous, now abandoned mission?).

Anonymous said...

"I expect running pre-mades to become the standard of running random BGs soon."

And so you get the rated bg era (selected players), without interesting rewards.
And once you reach the point where even a premade can loose against another premade, the whole "system" will fall apart. If everyone cheats, it's like noone cheating.

Andru said...

@Gevlon

You're not making any sense.

SOMEONE has to lead that premade. Such premades will have to be as close to a fixed group as possible in order to maximize win chance. In order to truly maximize win chance, they would have to use voice chat, maybe. Maybe even a structured organisation.

Hey, that sounds remarkably like a preparation phase for a rated BG. Why go random when you can go rated then? In order to maximize performance, the same steps would have to be taken. Rateds, however, provide greater rewards and do not rely on the use of a potentially abusive addon that Blizzard can disable in umpteen ways.

Like I said. Everyone who's good enough to fit in this so called random premade would be good enough to fit in a rated premade.

And if running premades for random BGs would be the norm, the chances are that such a premade would meet an equally organised premade. Like in a real rated BG! Only without the extra rewards and questionable use of an addon.

Wait, what?

For your idea to work there would have to be considerably many people uninterested in the rewards that rateds give, be skilled enough, AND care enough to beat random trash mobs(M&S) into oblivion, by 'teaching' them, or by driving them away.

I just can't see this happening to a reasonable degree. For one, this crusade against M&S has very few followers. Most other people follow because of self-interest. But there is mostly no self-interest there to be gained in random BGs (fun from grinding M&S?, ease of getting achievements? all gone if premades become norm.), and certainly not if they become the norm.

Even if Blizzard would not take any stance against AV Preform Enabler (doubtful, but let's rationalize here), and such premade randoms would become the norm, most of them will take their toys and go play in the rateds queue for greater rewards. Their void will be filled with M&S again with no organizational structure.

In essence, it would be an equilibrium between M&S and premade running teams. Kinda like now.

The only fear I have is that Blizzard would disable the addon in an uninspired move leaving you to rant on how they are hand-holding the M&S or some other such silliness, instead of letting your 'plan' fall flat on its face. (If you even get as far as to get any reasonable notoriety, that is. Premades made with preform AV enabler aren't new, and they were around long enough before you 'invented' them. I'd say that right now, your hubris is making you overestimate your impact on raising awareness to this addon.)

But well, don't let reason stop you. After all, crusading against M&S requires one to surrender all rationality, obviously.

Azuriel said...

All you will accomplish in the long-term, if anything, is a few lines of code changes that will prevent more than 5 (etc) players from the same server joining the same BG instance. Something like:

A) Guild checks. Can bypass via alt guilds, but that's an extra level of work I doubt you'd put up with.

B) Simply disabling the addon itself. Whispering each other is, again, an extra level of hassle you likely wouldn't put up with for long.

C) Stagger simultaneous invites. Once more than X players from same realm are in same BG, system starts favoring other realms (i.e. picking players out of order).

D) Favoring same-realm match-ups. Instead of trying to split your premade groups up, it puts them together and then pulls 10 (etc) people from the same server against you. Even if they aren't a premade, the games are likely to be closer (due to morale).

E) Grouping teams by (lifetime) PvP gear acquisition, so that the ones with more than X resilience (whether you wear it or not) will face similar opponents. Which will suck for the better-geared randoms, but prevents your goal of M&S abuse.

And so on.

Considering I hated seeing more than 4 people from the same server together when I wanted to vent some frustration in random BGs, I actually support your "principled" stand. The more you piss into the ocean, the more likely Blizzard will disable even partial premades. Your actions will have zero effect on the zeitgeist of random BGs, but enough crying on the forums will suddenly eliminate everyone like you from the playground.

Alkarasu said...

@Gevlon
"I expect running pre-mades to become the standard of running random BGs soon."

In this case, this functionality will be inevitably removed from the game completely. You know, how Blizzard works in such situations, and from personal experience too. Remember Wintergrasp? Nothing was wrong with the ability of BG leader to kick people... untill this ability was used to actively harm M&S. You may want to prove anything you like, but what you will prove every time is that while you (and not only you) hate M&S, Blizzard loves them with passion.

Gevlon said...

@Andru: you way overcomplicate this. You don't need ANY kind of leading for premade randoms. I don't LEAD premades. There is no need for any kind of communication, structure.

Simply by not inviting anyone in unenchanted gear or "lol" in his name, telling them to don't do the most atrocious fails (PvP with siege on SotA, going flag at EoS, leaving a tower alone at AV), you win flawlessly, because the opponents are plain useless.

The bar is so low, that you get a highly above average team simply by excluding bots, AFKers, unenchanted ones and arthasdklol.

Also, the situation where pre-made face pre-made is rare because the lolkids, idiots and bots won't disappear and THEY ARE THE MAJORITY. Even if EVERY OK-ish (not good, just non-retarded) players play premades, 70% of the BG players will be randoms. So the chance of facing another premade is mere 30%. In this case we use one form of communication: "lose fast, watch deserter debuff".

Anonymous said...

Interesting how some people on the one hand say that random BG's don't matter, yet at the same time want to use premades etc.; obviously they matter enough for people to restort to 'gated communities'/outright trickery.

The main problem with WoW is its community, where people behave like selfish dicks against strangers.

"LOL I fight in the middle because I just want to have fun - and if those who want to play CtF when they sign up for CtF like I did complaint: too bad, MY fun über alles!"

"LOL I fight in Conquest-geared premades vs randoms because I just want to have fun, too bad for the prime audience of Randoms!"

"LOL I play level 24 Twink-premades that ipso-facto will meet lesser geared & levelled toons in a bracket that's 99.9% Starter Edition toons, just to have fun, too bad if it hurts those 99.9%"

(same with PVE content btw)

And the 'solution' people suggest: join a gated community, basically a gang, instead of treating others the way people want to be treated themselves.

'Carebear!': hello, this is WoW, a game designed around catching Pets and Mounts and meaningless 'applaud yourself' Achievements aimed at the 12+ crowd, not a gritty F4All PvP sandbox.

(and yes, it makes people wonder why certain people don't even play EvE if that's the mentality they enspouse)

chewy said...

Spinks,

To your last comment:

For me heroic level isn't about slightly better gear, it's about the only remaining challenge in PVE. Post nerf the standard FL raids are just too easy. I could collect ponies I suppose but it's not really the same.

and no, I'm not any sort of elite super player, just an average one. My Mum doesn't have a basement and I haven't lived with her for decades.

Jumina said...

@spinks

"don't they realise that gear resets every patch so there's no point raiding 4 times a week just to get /slightly/ better gear"

Actually, why do you people play the game? We "HC players" play it to beat the challenge. A good encounter is fun for us. An adrenaline rush when racing for the last millions of the HP's of the boss. A good feeling of the job done when everything goes smoothly.

Do you play it just to get a better gear? Sounds stupid to me.

Anonymous said...

I suspect this will be one of your shorter running projects.

The enojyment of competition comes from the possibility of losing. If you always win (in particular, if you are always pasting your competition) it will get boring.

Those who need honor gear will still be motivated, but your boosters will start to lose interest. They will need some other motivation. Maybe your boosters will decide to work towards battlemaster or something like that. But at that point it's really just grinding - not much different then killing bog lords or picking up headress feathers.

As an aside, I would be interested to see how your team does in a couple weeks time after the season reset. The start of season honor grind forces the "elite" pvpers to do normals for a week. Overall play (on both sides) is noticeably better. While your superior organization will still give you a very large advantage, I doubt you'll be stomping horde continually that week.

Anonymous said...

@Azuriel: way simpler fixes that disable the addon:

1. don't give addons information about when the queue pops=> addon completely broken

2. if more than x people from same realm would pop at the same time, see that you put them into a fight against the same side (in the wake of Horde vs Horde or Alli vs Alli BG's to shorten the queue).
This would be really problematic for the addon, as your groups usually would face eachother rather than fight on the same side

3. simply forbid the addon by the TOS (like cross Faction communication addons are)

Wilson said...

On May 4, 2010, you used the same Headless Horseman quote to launch your plan to control Wintergrasp with your ganking guild. Five weeks later, you pulled the plug on not only the project but the entire guild, with nothing accomplished. The primary reason was that your followers simply lost interest.

I expect will see a fairly similar result here.

Gevlon said...

@Wilson: there will always be someone who wants honor gear. They will always be interested. In WG/TB you must motivate the whole faction of the server. Here all I need is motivating random people who are already motivated.

Wilson said...

Yes, but these aren't the people you dominated TB with. It's going to end in tears.

Esteban said...

Gevlon, you Randian muppet!

What's wrong with enjoying one's skill and enlightenment as its own reward, instead of constantly demanding that others be told that they're Doing It Wrong and don't deserve their shinies?

The gear/rewards are reset all the time and are just tools to do the job, anyway. It's one's enduring ability to compete that matters and is the source of happiness.

And why should I care if some poor sod who likes collecting pets and is happy enough beating a normal, non-HC 5-man be impressed with my arena rating? It's a meaningless number to them. I'd rather be appreciated by someone in my "ghetto" who might smile when he sees a perfect cc setup for a kill, pw: deathing a scattershot, an offensive lifegrip...

If I talk to a girl in a bar IRL, I don't expect her to be impressed with some elegant experimental design from my research work. She wouldn't understand it (not because she's stupid, but because she hasn't put in the time and specialisation) and she only cares if I make her laugh or carry an interesting general conversation. It's the same thing, really.

Anonymous said...

I was curious to see Blizzard's opinion about this matter. I told them the name of the addon and the functionality, and said I knew people who were actively exploiting the game mechanic which I described. Their reply? They wanted me to report with names. I'd be very interested to see what will happen, but I did not stumble upon it... yet.

Selkhet said...

You make a bit mistake there. HC raiders do not raid to get "slightly better gear", and those who do are usually mocked, or only brought for easy farm fights. Bench warmers.

Endgame raiding, for some people, is... wait for it... FUN.

Anonymous said...

"While I enjoy playing RBGs, they have absolutely zero community relevance."

That's as social as it gets: you don't go for what you like (raids, rbgs) but for what impresses the "community".

It's actually a theme I notice a lot with your posts: you hate (that alone is an irrational thing) the M&S so much that you go to great length to punish them just to show them how wrong they are. That's both asking for respect from your peers (see how I, Gevlon, owned the M&S!) as much as asking for respect from the M&S themself (oh noes, there's Gevlon, he is gonna own us so hard until we grown brains!).

Sorry, for me that's just total failure for somebody who calls himself "a-social" and a goblin.

PT Barnum said...

It needs to be emphasized just how deliberately retarded these people play.

I mean DELIBERATELY cause they break rules, THE RULES. THE RULES that determine if you win or lose if the other team isn't totally useless.

But if you let the enemy team kill a tower or two by stopping carrying these f!, they knock it off... a little.

A simple example is the "recall" moron in LoL.

You win a teamfight. And then, since the punk has some gold he decides to zone to "buy some cool loot".

Now, you could push the tower and blow an inhibitor... which is half of GG right there. HALF. But he has to go buy some Loot. LOL.

To carry these f! you have to win every teamfight. There are variations on the wandering moron, but they all do the same thing.

And mostly they won't change. However, simply to make myself feel better, I go wandering around for a while every time they do that. LOL. This does sometimes have the effect of scaring them into being less totally useless. More importantly, it makes me feel better.

Again, this isn't complicated.

"If you win a teamfight, then you Kill Tower/Kill Dragon/Kill Baron."

See, simple? But LOL, they want to do their BLEEP.