Greedy Goblin

Friday, July 2, 2010

We all make mistakes right?

After I mentioned the "300G to pot" penalty to those who wipe us with stupid a mistake, heated discussion started. Most people called it completely wrong to fine people for mistakes as we "all make mistakes".

I guess the "we all make mistakes" is one of the major points in the socialist philosophy, that is based on the core idea that one is not responsible for his own actions and the "heplfull ppl" shall save him from its consequences. Like all socialist nonsense, it has a true core: we indeed all make mistakes. However these mistakes differ in severity and frequency.

As there is no free lunch, also there is no mistake without penalty. We can only decide who pays the penalty. For example if a raid wipes, the time of the try + runin is lost, along with consumables and repair costs. Someone must pay it. The socialist answer is to pay it equally. The guy who froze 5 others at Sindy lost just as much time and paid just as much repair cost as the other one who did everything fine. So on average you pay as much for mistakes as much mistakes the average groupmember makes. This system rewards those who make mistakes more than the average and penalize those who make less. It's no surprise, it's a running theme among socialists systems.

Since paying penalty for mistakes (-50 DKP) is rare even among HC guilds, I guess this system is not just supported by mistake-making M&S. It's also supported by good people who way overestimate their mistake rate (it's common among good performers to focus on their own mistakes) and also among people who want to be positively judged by peers. The idea of being penalized front of peers in unbearable for them, even if it's much less frequent than it is for an average guy.


To see it why it works in The PuG (people are keep signing up and keep being active despite the chance of being penalized) we must see both the implementation and the different mindset of the players:
  • Only qualitative mistakes are penalized. You freeze people in Sindy P3 or do not, you kite the ooze to the ooze tank or do not, you got cleaved by Marrowgar or do not. The mistake is obviously done. On the other hand "bit low DPS" or "got few stacks of this or that" are not.
  • Only personal mistakes are penalized. Only you can run to the zombies in LK P1, but many people can dispel. If you danced in the middle of the raid with plague, you pay penalty. If one dies among the zombies, the dispel meter is posted and all dispel-capable people are asked to focus on dispel instead of other jobs. If always the same guy is at bottom, he will be replaced but not penalized. The point is that you can penalize what someone can but did not do (because of slacking, negligence or bad priorities). If someone can't, no penalty can fix that. He must be replaced. He can come when he practiced. It applies also to "permanently low DPS".
  • Mistakes are only penalized when they matter. The penalty is compensation to the others for the damage you caused and not something arbitrary. So the raid must wipe because of the mistake.
  • Mistakes are only penalized when they stand out from the average performance. If half the raid did something stupid (typical while learning a new boss), it's no point to penalize. The reason is that the damage is the same. The innocent guy don't have 5x higher repair cost just because 5 people failed. On the other hand administering 5x 60G takes too much time.
The most important thing is to recognize is if you don't penalize mistakes officially, it will be done unofficially. People are not happy to suffer losses because of others. In social guilds they are forced and they leave. In HC guilds one of the main reasons for high attendance requirement is to have a group where no one make mistakes. The cost is of course being forced to play and excluding possible good players.

Penalizing the mistakes officially is one of the key features that allow The PuG to accept new players. The experienced ones have no reason to reject playing with new ones as they either perform well, or will pay compensation. While you can claim that it's unwelcoming to new players, it's not, since after they don't make stupid mistake, they get bosskills easier as the others can carry them a bit, can make up for a bit of low performance.

I almost forgot the "different mindset" part. Since the social behavior is banned in The PuG, people are not focused on their "reputation" or "good peer opinion". So 300G penalty is 300G for them and not "300G + publicly humiliated front of peers who will think I'm a n00b".

I forgot to mention (considered it obvious) but a commenter emphasized it, so I write it down: paying the 300G makes the error "forgiven", it will no longer be mentioned or serve as a basis of later decisions. It removes the fear that if you mess up something today, you won't be invited "as n00b" two months later. Every raid starts with a blank page. It even applies to replaced players. I always assume that they practiced/read up after removed and now they are ready for the task. If not, well, I can fine/replace them again. No one is permanently replaced. You get chances again and again, exactly because if you fail, you only harm yourself by paying and by being saved to an ID and replaced.

If you like how The PuG is organized, join! We are 120, Sindy and Halion down. Note: declaring the 300G is the right of the raid leader. And your right is to not raid with an unjust leader.

53 comments:

Miss Medicina said...

"it's common among good performers to focus on their own mistakes"

I can't remember if it was you or someone else that made a post about this, but I'm curious: why do you think that is? Why do people who are good performers always think they make more mistakes than they do?

Or is the fact that they recognize how many mistakes they make what makes them such good performers?

Xerian said...

Honestly, what are 300g these days anyway.

Besides that, yeah I see it similarily.
Everyone makes mistakes - that is only natural and makes raiding what it is - you not only have to adjust to boss abilities, but also to minor mistakes that are made.
Say, like someone standing a second or two in Death and Decay at LDW or Coldflame at Marrowgar.

However, there are other mistakes that are common to wipe the raid. Such as screwing up with Frost Beacon on Sindragosa, Defile on LK, letting the Gas Cloud on Putri reach its target.

You can not only almost be sure it wipes the raid, but also determine the exact person that made the mistake.

The penalty shows one thing:
You are responsible for your actions (in these case especially: mistakes) and they have consequences.

Simon said...

Making everyone who can cleance disease on Ph1 of LK is a bad idea.
While on, say, deathwhisper there is no harm in having all mages stop whatever they are doing and decurse, on LK cleancing to early will make plage jump to other raider and will make it lose a stack and also will give stack of buff to LK. It's better to have designated cleanser for LK and Rotface.

Vinnyj said...

Yes, this is exactly how it should be done. I don't raid much anymore, but I know my server quite well and I have a half-decent eye for the difference between terrible PUG's and acceptable PUG's.

Since I usually don't have the GS/Ach requirement, for the acceptable PUG's I try to make a deal with the RL. For example: if I'm the lowest healer on the meter, or one of the lowest 3 DPS in your raid ON ANY WIPE I will pay you 2000 gold.

Raid Leaders gladly accept and I've never had to pay yet; even after getting into a ToC (yeah, back when it was new) on my blue-geared resto druid.

Yaggle said...

@Miss Medicina:

My guess is that the reason good performers focus on their own mistakes is mostly attributable to the link between over-achievers and narcissistic personality disorder. They may think that the world revolves around themselves, and often be negative and disparaging, however when the spotlight is on them, they can be counted on to overachieve and do whatever they do to lower their own mistakes to maintain their good standing. I'll take a NPD on my team any time as long as I don't have to go home with them.

Anterali said...

I´m in PUG, too but I don´t like your Ideas.

1st:

Bid-Sytem. It´s too complex, too hard to explain and made just by yourself without any proven auction-theory. I´d use the ebay-system, you just bid your maxprice & have to pay 2nd bid +1 (increment). This forces the players to bid their own price, not their price with increment -1 (if you´re interested in the theoretical reasons, just tell me I´ll post some more).

"Competition" problem? More competition = more money, and the information is easily open. Nobody would join a raid with setup permissions to make sure, you will get the loot = market solves it.

2. Your penalty system sucks, I´m sorry. You play government and make a law "this is slacking, worth 300g". why not 250? or 350? You should mathematical proove the right sum. Make average G/hour income of all players in the raid, plus the average repaircost / whipe for each player (wheighted for exalted bonusses for transferred chars & missed bonusses for newbies). This would lead to the mathematical best solution, what 1 whipe should cost, you just have to put 10-20 variables in your really fair term.

And this way suck! You´d have a 10+ pages law how to pay your penalty.

The solution:

Let the market decide. The raidleader announce after 1-2-XYZ Whipes: "Any kickvotes up?" Now everybody can announce a player with reason to be kicked. If enough players are harmed by the repeated whipes, they would nominate this guy.

Now they can start bidding: They tell you the sum of Gold for the pot which would compensate their lost of time / Money etc. After that, take the average / whatever index of this sum and tell the slacking guy: Pay XYZ or get kicked.

It has to be in the choice of the raid, which sum of gold would compensate your wasted efford. NOT the almighty goblin who´s eventually not in the raid.

Gevlon said...

@Anterali: the bid system has no alternative as there is no Blizzard function to bid silently and reliably (if you bid in whisper, the RL can tell the info to his buddies).

The 300G is the average repair cost + runin time x 10. The raid leader invokes it. If you think the raid leader is unjust, don't raid with him.

Anonymous said...

Making mistakes is ok to a point: when a fight is new and is being learned. After a couple of tries I expect anyone with half a brain to understand the dangers and deal with them. In my guild, we used to be classified as hardcore: anyone making mistakes or not doing their bit could be immediately replaced with anyone of 2-3 representatives of their class waiting outside for an opportunity to show that they can pull their weight.

Currently my guild is not hardcore, we raid 3 to 4 nights at most. I do not have the same expectation of people in terms of mistakes but anyone making a silly mistake has to put 20 flasks or 40 fish feasts in the guild bank.

People that repeatedly cause wipes, are not taken the following week in raids and are told specifically the issue.

Anonymous said...

There are personal roles that are more difficult to perform then others.

If you think that it's only proper that people are penalized for their mistakes, rather then the whole raid having to suffer the penalty equally...

Then why do you reward people who perform more difficult roles equally to the people who don't?

Shouldn't you be advocating that a HC raiding guild should be awarding the LK dispelling healer extra DKP for doing a job that has a higher mistake rate then that of a DPS?

Reward should be proportionate to responsibility. In the vast majority of guilds, official expectations for responsibility, in a raid are equal between all members. Likewise, so are the rewards.

Increasing the responsibility, and keeping the reward imbalances that system. The most rational behavior for a person who is assigned extra responsibility, but the same reward, is to leave the guild.

Gevlon said...

@last anonymous: the solution is simple: no one is ASSIGNED with any task. People who volunteer on their own choice do it.

Some of these choices are implicit. For example when you rolled a warrior and geared him as tank, you volunteered to do all the things that a tank have. You can change your mind by respecing and re-gearing fury.

For such jobs as "LK dispeler" or "LDW interrupt" I prefer having multiple people, at least 2, just to make sure. Rather waste a GCD on a double-dispel.

What if no one volunteers for a job? We are screwed then. That raid will not down that boss that week.

Eric-Wubbo said...

@Miss Medicina: psychology has shown that in general, while competent people underestimate their own abilities relative to others, incompetent people tend to overestimate their own ability (possibly for the reason that if they realized their mistakes, they would not be incompetent), see wikipedia, the Dunning-Kruger effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).

Note by the way that the strength of the Dunning-Kruger effect varies per person, and also, on average, per culture. Americans for some reason tend to show a rather strong DK-effect, while East Asians have a kind of much lower baseline, even underestimating their ability in general.

@Gevlon: Gold fines are indeed uncommon, put I suspect not only because people dislike being singled out for punishment or underestimate their skill, but also because regular people hate to reject others, especially if they know the other. The effect would be weaker if people don't know each other (a PuG), or you have a goblin as raid leader. But for a regular guild run, the social feelings among even HC raiders could cause too much strain. Anyway, good luck!

Anonymous said...

The good player is making a mistake raiding with mistake-making M&S. Kick the idiots as soon as (if not before) a mistake happens so they don't incure repair costs and don't tolerate them. The raid leader is culpable if they invite M&S and a competent raider shouldn't tolerate them.

You can't admit your own error in bringing scrubs to a raid so you change the system thus removing your own responcibility. You have turned it into a nanny service. "Hi guys. I've got a half full raid of competent people. Pay XXX to be carried through ICC"

Nothing wrong with that, just don't make out that the people who make mistakes are responcible when they can only making the mistake because you let them.

Gevlon said...

@dobablo: you assume that there are "perfect" and "terrible" players only. There are in-between people who make mistakes but not always.

Rhii said...

I like that you recognize different tiers of mistakes. For example, imagine a night with many wipes, the tank maybe forgets to put up Righteous Fury/Frost Presence before pulling. It's just a mistake of laziness and repetition, and could be avoided by paying attention better. And it frequently wipes the raid.

I sometimes also forget to put up a particular buff (Seal of Light) after a wipe, but as a Holy Paladin, that mistake is very unlikely to cause a wipe. If I need the haste buff from judgement that badly in the first few GCDs of a pull, something else has already gone horribly wrong.

Both mistakes are forgetting to rebuff, both are lazy mistakes plain and simple, but one costs everybody and the other only costs me a few moments of embarrassment and a few wasted GCDs.

It's an interesting idea, Gevlon, I'll be reading to see what the raiders make of it.

Lanikai said...

From your original post:
"The guild is named "The PuG" for a reason: it wants to simulate PuG-ing from a competent base. Practically being in the guild is like being guildless on a server where everyone are competent. I want to prove that PuG got it's bad name not from being without hierarchy but from the complete lack of skill or even human decency of the available playerbase. I want to prove that if people wouldn't be M&S, there would be no need for organizations and obligations."

However, I have never been in a PuG that has successfully imposed penalties on party members - like your 300g wipe penalty. They have removed under performers and idiots, but penalties do not work in a PuG environment.

The point is that if someone is not performing as they should be then they are likely to:
a) be removed from the raid and replaced.
b) build a reputation for themselves and find it difficult to get into future PuGs.

Both of which could still remain true for your guild - without penalties.

So by introducing rules such as this is less PuG like and more like the M&S guild I am already in.

Finally, I also dislike the 1/3 GDKP rule. I think this is unnecessary as GDKP works perfectly well already. Introducing this rule seems to be there to fix a problem that doesn't exist. Anyone could attempt to boost their earnings on an item that they do not want. So what!? We would all profit if they did so successfully. And the winner would pay the amount that they value the drop to be worth since they carried on bidding. However, the risk would be they they have to pay too much gold for an item that they do not want. One I am unlikely to take anyway.

So without further ado, please remove me (Lanikai) from your roster. I had hoped to level my character in time to down the LK with you and venture into the new Cataclysm raids. But I think I'd rather stick with my main.

I will continue to follow your blog and maybe ask for an invite back if things change.

Good luck to you all.

Gevlon said...

@Lanikai: at first penalty money is common in GDKP pugs. In a /roll pug it's impossible due to people would just reply "lol" and would leave with "this is so much fail lol" when you insist on it. So you can only kick them.

I won't remove anyone because of a blog comment, since anyone can register "Lanikai". A character is removed if
* inactive for a month (2 weeks for a lowbie)
* leaves on his own
* kicked for repeated terrible behavior

Anonymous said...

The job of the dispeller is a lot more then just a GCD every 20 seconds - if it were, this wouldn't be an issue. I've spent the better part of... Six nights on that fight, much of which was in phase 1, so believe me when I tell you that you only want a single person doing it.

"Nobody volunteering, guess we aren't raiding" is not an appropriate resolution for your problem. There are people who would volunteer, or wouldn't be too upset about "Being volunteered" if it didn't mean that they'd be paying the "Fail tax".

Given the tax, I would never volunteer to do anything that would increase my chances of failure in your guild - I'd receive no monetary reward and no social recognition for doing so. The most rational action would be wait for someone else to volunteer.

If everyone were rational, that would mean the guild can't raid - without forcing people to volunteer. I'd call that a broken system.

You could always split the responsibility for failure between several people... Which is exactly what your 300G rule is trying to avoid.

Gevlon said...

@last anonymous: you exactly point on the M&S guild, most probably that's why you wipe on P1. Hey, even The PuG is safely in P2!!!

If you have no volunteers, the proper action is simply not raid, then go into a sure and pointless wipefest.

The "one dispeler" is stupid. I dispel on P1 with other people and never stop to be annoyed when I dispel 2x more than them. I'm fully aware that I'm imperfect and would like to have a double. Also, as it's emphasized in the text, the "late dispel" problem is NOT taxed, exactly because it's not a one-person responsibility.

Also, people usually don't mind challenges (we are not talking about M&S). They actually like doing something great and happily volunteer for interesting jobs. You know most non-M&S don't want to amuse peers. They want to amuse themselves.

Lanikai said...

"at first penalty money is common in GDKP pugs"

maybe, maybe not. I have not raided with GDKP much before and cannot comment on what is common on other servers.

"I won't remove anyone because of a blog comment, since anyone can register "Lanikai"."

Of course. I will allow the 2 week inactivity period to kick in.

Xerian said...

Well volunteering also always means you are confident you can accomplish the task you are volunteering for.
Or doesn't it?
Why should you volunteer to do something the encounter depends on, if you have never done it before or don't think you could do it?

Anonymous said...

"Also, people usually don't mind challenges (we are not talking about M&S). They actually like doing something great and happily volunteer for interesting jobs. You know most non-M&S don't want to amuse peers. They want to amuse themselves."

I can confirm this. On Rotface (10man or 25man, heroic or not) I (mage) always take care of kiting oozes. Our tanks are happy to DPS for this encounter so they can see themselves on the meters without scrolling down the list and I... well, DPSing Rotface is just so damn boring. I am happy to have something more interesting to do.

marv said...

This so called PuG is just a normal guild, nothing more, nothing less.

You raid with the good players, you kick (or bench, or sort out, or discourage to log on, call it what you like) the bad players.

The only difference is that a normal guild uses common sense for these decisions, but you hide behind one of the most complex rule sets ever created for a guild.

I fail to see the novelty of the concept any more.

Kristine Ask said...

Having a penalty system does encourage the pugging attitude. As decent guilds would quickly rid themselves of poor players all together.

So, as long as the PuG guild don't want to kick poor players, having a penalty for fucking up is the common social/casual raiding thing to do.

What facinates me is that while systems like these seem like a tightening of the social structure, in reality you are creating a space for failure. If someone fucks up, they know they will have to pay 300g. Since they have paid the "fine" it also implies that the sin is forgiven.

Regarding the amount: it is hardly enough to be a problem for any of your raiders - and in such the penalty is clearly about the social stigma attached to it.

Either way, good luck with continued raiding. Hope you have fun.

Frederick said...

Your method of kicking the person with the lowest dispels for Lich King Phase 1 actively encourages early dispelling - this doesn't seem like the kind of activity you want to encourage during that encounter.

I don't understand why you think having one dispeller in phase 1 is 'stupid'. I would much rather have one healer concentrating on the task than 2 or 3 'keeping an eye on it'.

Gevlon said...

@Frederick: no one kicked slacking dispelers. Also, dispel is only a problem if someone dies to the debuff. This case ALL dispelers made a mistake and the lowest dispeler made this mistake more often then the one who did it right 4 times and mistaken once.

On the other hand early dispel is a 300G class error.

Louise said...

I wish people used a penalty, the amount of idiots you get in TotC for fights like Lord Jaraxxus is just ridiculous.

Everyone makes mistakes BUT you should learn from them.

ardoRic said...

I was once on my druid healer and tried something: positive reinforcement.

On a 10 man run I stated up front that I would offer 100g to anyone above me on dispels on LDW.

Suddenly, everyone who could was dispelling curses, and more effectively, people were dispelling magical debuffs like the crap that makes you slower after a frostbolt volley.

It's awesome what a couple hundred gold can do as incentive.

Wojtek said...

I ride with The PuG and I personally don't see anything wrong with the fine. I paid it once already for not knowing the tactics (not all of it).

It's not like we're caughing up thousands of gold every wipe on LK, I haven't paid once so far.

300g fine tells you clearly that you weren't "unlucky", that you made a mistake. You'll also get a clear explanation of what to do.

Of course, if you're a retard this system may be problematic for you...

Anonymous said...

"I forgot to mention (considered it obvious) but a commenter emphasized it, so I write it down: paying the 300G makes the error "forgiven", it will no longer be mentioned or serve as a basis of later decisions."

For such a smart guy, you really have no idea how people work. NOTHING is ever forgiven. NOTHING is ever forgotten. You can try to minimize it, but at the end of the day you're still going to be seething silently at the guy who linked vomit and killed 3 DPS. There is no amount of enlightenment that will save you from these feelings. The only thing capable of doing that is a lobotomy.

ZachPruckowski said...

Gevlon, I suspect the reason that top-tier guilds don't have penalties like that is for three reasons:



1) Every player there knows that enough screwing up gets you benched.



2) Less expendable raiders. In a guild with like 40-50 people, you have some leeway to chase away raiders, because replacements are a dime a dozen. In a bleeding edge guild, if your attrition/burnout rate rises, you waste a lot of time recruiting people.



3) On that bleeding edge, there are no TankSpot videos or detailed strats available. And it's expected that the raid will wipe dozens of times getting the kill.

Denethal said...

Many argue that it's counterproductive for people, having to pay 300 gold to the GDKP-pot when they do a mistake that causes a raid-wipe.


This baffles me.


While 300 gold isn't much for people with goblinish moneymaking schemes, it is roughly what it costs everyone present in the raid in repairs and time wasted. The logic and math is quite sound.


However, I'm going to try to explain this in a simple way:


Yes. Paying 300 gold when you wipe the raid works as a deterrent. Not only for people to stop doing stupid mistakes, but also to keep the morale within the raid positive. While this isn't exactly an measurable factor you can calculate, it does work for me to keep my morale up, as well as my interest in raiding.


Seeing how we all are above the M&S-level of players, there is no issues with admitting guilt, there is no shame in saying "I screwed up, sorry, I'll try not to do it again." and pay the repairbill for that wipe, alongside a small "sorry for wasting your time" penalty.


It is quite logic. You singlehandedly managed to wipe the raid. You might not have known that doing whatever you did would result in catastrophic proportions as a wipe is, but then again, you should have. We who raid expect the rest of the members of the raid to actually know what the hell they are doing, as well as having read up on tactics.

If you didn't know what to do, but still went on, you're -especially- to blame for it. It does not take much to press the "No" button when the readycheck comes up and clarify whatever you are uncertain of. We can spend 2 more minutes explaining you the part you don't understand if you just ask us.


There is no need for advanced math, such as "You did that task, so that's X, while you did that task, so that's Y" and then add all that into a long-dwindled formula. It's simply "You cost each of us X-amount of gold and we lost Y-amount of time, due to running back, rebuffing and get ready again." And that amount is roughly about 300 gold.


Now, some people argue that this rule will work as a deterrent against signing up or doing certain tasks. Why? You are in the raid to fulfill a purpose. So it isn't to be on top of the damage-meters or healing-meters, why is that so bad? We're not here to show off our superiority over the rest we pug content together with. We're here to actually -do- the content. If a scripted fight requires some of us to do certain tasks, that task is important for the success of the raid and for those of us who are in the raid, the execution of that task is way more important than you being high up on the damage- or healing-charts.


If the task is not done, it won't matter where on the list you are, as we're all wasting time running back after we are all dead.


In that retrospective, if you're in the PuG to show off your superior skills, then you -want- to do those tasks. It's -your- efforts that makes us succeed if you do.


On a sidenote.. Some have even asked to be removed from the guild due to this simple rule. To those I have only one thing to say: "Good bye, dramaqueen. You're not the kind we want among our ranks."

Anonymous said...

@ardoRic: Of course that might work as well. Generally there are two ways to encourage someone to change their behavior. The first way is to reward them for the behavior you want to see. The second is to punish them for behavior you don't want to see. I think Gevlon sees the game itself as rewarding good behavior by dropping loot when a boss dies. So to reinforce this he instituted punishments for incorrect behavior rather than additional (probably unnecessary in his mind) rewards for proper behavior.

Unknown said...

We have a dedicated dispeller. As a healer, I hate to waste a GCD (not technically, but clicking the dispel button can take up to one second, even on fail) to try to dispel. I need every GCD for heals. If every dispel caused 4 people to try to dispel, then you're just wasting the most important thing in raid encounters- time.

Anonymous said...

While I don't explicitly disagree with any points you've made in general, there is one specific error you made in regards to dispelling on the Lich King in phase one. That being the fact that the people with low overall dispel totals are not necessarily doing a bad job of dispelling, often the opposite is the case. The reason for this is that people with better timing, who are paying more attention and who know their own lag and trust their skill will wait longer to dispel, giving players time to get close enough to pass the disease off more reliably. The point of this is that the better players will often wait until 0.2 seconds before the disease would kill a player (unless they're already close enough to pass it to the mobs) while a less skilled player would dispel with as much as a whole second remaining. The upshot of this is that the people with the most skill are often the ones with a lower dispel total.

As an example there was the first few nights my guild was working on normal mode Lich King. We had all players who could dispel attempt it and for the most part it worked well enough, however we did end up losing some stacks, having them jump back onto melee or what have you. None of this caused us to wipe in phase one, though it did cost us enough time that we ended up assigning a primary dispeller (myself) and a secondary one as well. The reason I was chosen was not that I had the most dispels, in fact I often had zero, but because the guild knew that I was a reliable healer in general and I often get chosen for specific healing assignments. After that the dispels went almost perfectly, barring a few DPS who didn't run early enough. The secondary dispeller had so little to do that she was eventually told not to bother.

Essentially you're encouraging behavior that's counterproductive to actually downing the boss by introducing an artificial standard of performance not inherent to the fight. This isn't the end of the world, and it's certainly not going to stop you from downing the boss. It's not even necessarily all that wrong, since it's the best metric you have to measure performance in that aspect of the fight. Exactly like Gearscore.

Anonymous said...

I believe the reason a 300g puhishment is looked down upon does not have to do with it being to harsh or humiliating, but that it is not harsh or humiliating enough. 300g these days is really meaningless, even a below average player could farm that in twenty minutes and smart players in 5-10 minutes. So 300g really has almost no significance to the player who is forced to pay it, and in return they are shielded of their embarrassement. Numerous studies have shown that people are much more affected by social punishment than economical punishment (within reason, obviously a $250,000 fine is much worse than having someone laugh at you). The player who is mocked about freezing 5 guys on Sindy is way more likely to remember their mistake and change it in the future, than the guy who simply threw out 300 of his 50,000g stash and kept raiding.

Obviously everything I said about social vs. economical punishment can be argued, and someone such as Gevlon who simply does not care for social behaviour would think differently. But, I believe that a majority of the players in The PuG would react more positively to social incentives/punishments, than economical ones. The proof of this being that high end guilds follow this belief, and the raid leaders who chose that path have five years expierence running very successful guilds and are much more knowledgeable than me or the people reading this post about the subject.

Bristal said...

Admitting your own mistake to a group is more powerful than paying an imposed penalty that many would feel compel to argue with.

Thus you get: "OK I'll pay, but I know I didn't do anything wrong". No learning, likely no improvement.

Have the penalty, but if the person who caused the wipe owns up to it PRIOR to the penalty & is able to say how/why the mistake occured, learning and taking personal responsibility is reinforced and encouraged.

Repeated simple errors result in removal.

Anonymous said...

It is very common to have gold penalty in GDKP runs since it came out. Usually you would pay between 200 to 300 Gold for it, I even seen more on my server.

I think people in some of the less population servers just didn't get much chance to see a good GDKP run. For example, One of them on our server is 11/12 HM, people pay to get into that run.

Inno said...

People should be able to reasonably expect that their guild members or PuG members share a common goal and that they should perform at a level required to equaly contribute to the raid that you're participating in. We also have a monthly subscription fee in common. Since we're like minded in our real money paid and we're united by a common goal to complete the raid then it is very reasonable to pay an "error fee" if your avoidable actions cause other raid members to have to pay a fee based on your error. Based on the monthly subscription fee I would recommend that you charge 1g per dollar subscription fee for all of the raid members that wipe due to your blatant error. In this scenario if your error caused a wipe of a 10 man raid then you would be expected to pay 135g and during a 25 man raid you would be expected to pay 360g.

bilou said...

I like this rule because it will filter out filter out M&S and motivate the others to play at their best.

I just hope this rule won't get me broke :)

Anyway, I think you are moving away from the PUG simulation idea. The guild name is misleading. This is bad marketing. It's too bad that a guild can't be renamed.

The project is better defined by the 3 original goals, which could be rephrased as this:

- a casual raiding guild
- without M&S
- without social obligations
- without required attendance
- without hierarchy

With the new "300 g" rule, we are working toward goal #2: no M&S.

Unknown said...

I want into this guild.

Anonymous said...

The system seems rather confused and self-contradictory. The entire point of the gold penalty and the guild itself is to eliminate personal reputation as a measure for an individual raider, yet it makes reputation the sole measure for a raid leader. Why? Are raid leaders unique in that an in-guild reputation operates differently from a raider or is it simply a necessary evil to make the system work? What I see as an issue with this is that the measure of a raid leader is going to be in fair part how progressed they are which in turn is going to rely in no small part in the performance of the people they bring. Even if, officially, you are not stigmatized for causing wipes, a raid leader interested in their own prestige relative to other raid leaders in order to attract the best players definitely would take that reputation into account. This type of competition provides greater incentive for such bias, simply serving to drive it underground.

It seems to me that restricting the 300g penalty to mistakes that cause wipes simply ties the raid leader's hands and encourages bad behavior from those willing to exploit it. A dps player who contributes to a fight is risking being the cause of a wipe if they mess up a gimmick, meanwhile one that intentionally dies early essentially gambles that the raid won't wipe due to the enrage timer
wherein they could be blamed for the wipe (not a tremendous risk given the ICC buff and daily heroic frost badges). The motivation against doing this would be getting kicked or a bad reputation, which isn't any different from a guild under any other system and that behavior is actually encouraged under these rules and non-altruistic mindset.

The counterpoint to the idea of canceling a raid due to lack of volunteers for a riskier raid role would be off tanking putricide. Driving the abomination is actually easier than main tanking putricide, but it's a very gimmicky role with a few unintuitive quirks. From my own experience learning it and tutoring another tank, you would essentially expect 3 or so wipes learning it followed by a near 100% success rate afterward. Since the role is restricted to the off tank and is extremely niche, you can easily have players that are familiar with the other aspects of the fight except for selecting the off tank who may be wary of spending a personal 900g for the benefit of progressing the raid as a whole. It's a nonsensical combination of communist incentive with a capitalist disincentive, combining the worst of both worlds. However, while this situation would be dismissed as a doomed wipefest that shouldn't even be tried, in practical terms it would likely be three wipes followed by a kill.

This is essentially why I'm so wary of declaring the validity of the method so soon. This disincentive without an accompanying incentive which seems like it would lead to stagnation barring the good judgment of the raid leader, which is the same issue when choosing who to invite to a given raid in the first place in any other guild. The system seems to rely on prior familiarity with the fight, which is a byproduct of wiping on it previously in other guilds. The PUG is somewhat too perfect in timing since it comes when players have already practiced much of ICC and with the summer prior to an expansion when many guilds may be languishing from inactivity and leading to players who want to progress for the sake of itself being available. I've seen so many new or resurgent guilds declare their new found progress due to a victory of the leadership or their methods only to collapse under the first instance of leadership conflict or progression stagnation. The reality was that the raiding base was previously familiar with the content from doing it with other guilds and were simply retreading old territory. I'd be interested to see if the guild survives into cataclysm where progression consists of legitimately new content to most raiders and where using fixed raid teams isn't underminded by summer inactivity.

Anonymous said...

The system seems rather confused and self-contradictory. On one hand, the entire point of the gold penalty and the guild itself is to eliminate personal reputation as a measure for an individual raider, yet it makes reputation the sole measure for a raid leader. Why? Are raid leaders unique in that an in-guild reputation operates differently from a raider or is it simply a necessary evil to make the system work? What I see as an issue with this is that the measure of a raid leader is going to be in fair part how progressed they are which in turn is going to rely in no small part in the performance of the people they bring. Even if, officially, you are not stigmatized for causing wipes, a raid leader interested in their own prestige relative to other raid leaders in order to attract the best players definitely would take that reputation into account. This type of competition provides greater incentive for such bias, simply serving to drive it underground.

It seems to me that restricting the 300g penalty to mistakes that cause wipes simply ties the raid leader's hands and encourages bad behavior from those willing to exploit it. A dps player who contributes to a fight is risking being the cause of a wipe if they mess up a gimmick, meanwhile one that intentionally dies early essentially gambles that the raid won't wipe due to the enrage timer
wherein they could be blamed for the wipe (not a tremendous risk given the ICC buff and daily heroic frost badges). The motivation against doing this would be getting kicked or a bad reputation, which isn't any different from a guild under any other system and that behavior is actually encouraged under these rules and non-altruistic mindset.

Continued in next comment due to size...

Anonymous said...

Continued.

The counterpoint to canceling a raid due to lack of volunteers for a riskier raid role would be off tanking putricide. Driving the abomination is actually easier than main tanking putricide, but it's a very gimmicky role with a few unintuitive quirks. From my own experience learning it and tutoring another tank, you would essentially expect 3 or so wipes learning it followed by a near 100% success rate afterward. Since the role is restricted to the off tank and is extremely niche, you can easily have players that are familiar with the other aspects of the fight except for the off tank who may be wary of spending a personal 900g for the benefit of progressing the raid as a whole. It's a nonsensical combination of communist incentive with a capitalist disincentive, combining the worst of both worlds. However, while this situation would be dismissed as a doomed wipefest that shouldn't even be tried, in practical terms it would likely be three wipes followed by a kill.

This is essentially why I'm wary of declaring the validity of the method so soon. This disincentive without an accompanying incentive which seems like it would lead to stagnation barring the good judgment of the raid leader, which is the same issue when choosing who to invite to a given raid in the first place in any other guild. The system seems to rely on prior familiarity with the fight, which is a byproduct of wiping on it previously in other guilds. The PUG is somewhat too perfect in timing since it comes when players have already practiced much of ICC and with the summer prior to an expansion when many guilds may be languishing from inactivity and leading to players who want to progress for the sake of itself being available. I've seen so many new or resurgent guilds declare their new found progress due to a victory of the leadership or their methods only to collapse under the first instance of leadership conflict or progression stagnation. The reality was that the raiding base was previously familiar with the content from doing it with other guilds and were simply retreading old territory. I'd be interested to see if the guild survives into cataclysm where progression consists of legitimately new content to most raiders and where using fixed raid teams isn't underminded by summer inactivity.

Denethal said...

I wrote a post that's apparently too long to be accepted as a comment, so you'll just have to read my response here: http://paladinwithin.blogspot.com/2010/07/people-complaining-about-having-to-take.html

nehunter said...

Hey, was thinking of your "better PuG" guild and thought that what is needed for a long time in wow is an honest guild( as opposed to - Come with us, we'll clear everything)

A guild that has 8 normal bosses on farm, and will always to those with anyone that passes a M&S test (training dummy + all the non-raiding gear he can get himself)
Those that care about raiding are free to leave for a long established guild (they want that anyway)
You could do 8 bosses on pug, but usually only if everyone already knows the fights, so no patience for a new guy - granting there the road from reading tactics and doing them is not instant
Recruitment always open, last people for the run can come from trade.

If people want to raid there should be a place to learn that, trade chat is not it, a casual guild is even worse (And let's face it we all want to get in the biggest guilds on the server)

Fawr said...

I think you are at the risk of weird encounter mechanics messing this up.

The primary example would be needing 2 priests to tank in Naxx25.

In that case you need priests to volunteer, but often they know they aren't going to be good at it and are volunteering to be the likely cause of a wipe.

In my experience those priests often stuff it up, either because they are unfamiliar with tanking, with mind control or with the encounter. I'd say that you want to punish the last one but not the other two.

chewy said...

When I have time to read your post and the comments I find this topic fascinating.

You wrote somewhere that you don't use vent because you don't want to simply shout at people to make them do things, you want them to realise for themselves where they're going wrong.

Isn't the 300g fine a form of shouting at them ?

Kurt said...

"You wrote somewhere that you don't use vent because you don't want to simply shout at people to make them do things...Isn't the 300g fine a form of shouting at them ?"

I interpreted the "shouting" comment as referring to learning new bosses as a group, the 300g refers to wiping due to a stupid mistake on a boss that is generally known by the raid.

Putting that aside, you could make your same objection to the use of text-based communication during raids, and inquire why he doesn't ban that from occurring, since it's so similar to vent. The key difference between the 300g fine, and talking about the fight in /raid after the wipe, and vent, is that vent is used by people for easier immediate communication --both post fight analysis and the 300g fine occur after the fight is over.

I know that although my guild requires vent, I tend to use it only between fights, making it closer in function to ingame chat for me anyway. Perhaps some people have problems with patience, and don't want to wait.

chewy said...

"..you could make your same objection to the use of text-based communication during raids.."

It wasn't an objection it was an observation. I don't object to anything this project does until it has some material effect on me, which is highly unlikely ever to be the case.

What I was observing is that the method used to focus peoples attention, get them to think about their mistakes, is the financial penalty. The only difference between that and shouting at someone "not to stand in the fire" on vent is that one is more immediate than the other.

It's the behavioural change that is important. Gevlon is pursuing the idea that a fine after the event is more effective than a verbal warning in real time.

I'm not convinced that one is more effective than the other so my question was an invitation to Gevlon to give his opinion on why he believes they are.

Gevlon said...

@Chewy: ventrilo makes people lazy. They just get use to "do what's been told". The responsibility to think is solely on the raid leader. "no one told me to not stand there lol" thinks the raider in such environment.

I expect the people to think on their own.

Kurt said...

@chewy

'Objection, observation,' I'm not interested in these semantics; you didn't make any substantive differentiation between these two words that affects my earlier response, although apparently you said something that you found emotionally important to get off your chest.

As to the effectiveness of after the fact fines or mid-attempt ventrilo yelling--I find your question meaningless. Effective towards what goal, measured how? I could name double-digit pros and cons for using vent, to reduce the issue to a single ill-defined metric is ridiculous. If you don't want other people than Gevlon to point out flaws in your logic, you could always use email instead of a public forum's comments :)

Anonymous said...

Gelvon, I wasn't talking about regular LK dispels. I was talking about heroic LK dispels. You shouldn't cite the PUG being in Phase 2 of the regular fight to be a greater accomplishment.

And after a good 12 wipes where dispels were a factor... I've just had a whole night of perfect cleanses. I'm sure glad 3600 of my gold didn't get split among people who's responsibility consists of "Don't stand in shadow trap."

Anonymous said...

I'm fairly sure having each member pay their way is a Capitalist idea, not a Socialist one. If someone in the raid is wiping you, its your own damn fault for staying in a raid with them. Tell them to improve or kick them and repair your own gear.