Greedy Goblin

Monday, October 11, 2010

It's cool lol

People keep commenting about the ones I call M&S that they are not worse than us, just have different values, different aims. The "i do whats fun 4 me lol so chill" is the primitive version of "I'm not interested in this aspect of the game, therefore my performance in this aspect is low. Since it's a game, I can present low performance without consequences". Sounds true, right?

However there is a nasty question here: if they play a different aspect of the game, why do I bump into them? I mean I don't play SC2 simply because I'm not interested in games where clicks/minute numbers win. I would be a terrible SC2 player, yet I don't ruin any SC2 fan's game as I'm not playing.

While "I'm not interested in min-maxing my character, just shoot random abilities for fun" is completely legitimate way of playing, the question rises: why do these people show up in the same teams as I do? I mean our interests in the game are surely different, why are we playing in the same group? The logical move from the "i play 4 fun" people would be forming guilds of similar people and enjoy the game together. Why do I never see "lolslayaz is a fun guild looking for fun people who don't give us elitist crap just enjoy the game"?

The solution is closely connected to my last job-article. The claim that "different people consider different things fun, so they play for different reasons" is 95% wrong. It's persistent, as most thinking people belong to the 5% who wrongfully assume that all people are like them. For them, "fun" is really self-determined and unique. However the other 95% are simple socials, and for them "fun" is absolutely not self-determined. It is "being cool", aka gaining acceptance and respect of peers.

In WoW the source of pride is gearscore. So all the socials want to get high ilvl epics. Some of them are lucky and this external goal (cool) is by accident equal to their personal goal (fun). They are hardcore raiders/PvP-ers and while they play to be cool, they do have fun in the process. Since they are personally motivated, they do their homework and try to do their job right. Note: I do not claim that every hardcore are such socials, as one completely asocially can choose bleeding edge raiding simply for its inherent difficulty yet controlability providing flow. Such players would keep playing that way without rewards.

Majority of the socials are not so lucky. They don't find the effort needed to be competitive fun, that's why they label it "no life", as they believe it cannot be fun, it's a work, not "life". If they wouldn't be socials, they would never go near a raid or competitive PvP. They would happily collect pets or duel with their friends or do whatever they desire. However, as socials they must get cool items. So they force themselves to attend to raids. They hate it and hate those "no-lifers" who make the raid successful. They would gladly replace them with "fun ppl", but that case they wouldn't get the shinies. The reason of their hate is that the loot of of the good players force them to raid. If no one had a single 264 then their gear wouldn't be sub-par, so they wouldn't be unfavorably compared. By gaining 264, the "no lifers" force them to gain 264 too. The idea of having worse status symbols is unbearable for them.

They are the M&S. They want goals but don't want the way that leads there. The only way for them to get there is being carried. They don't want to isolate from us despite they hate us, they want to leech on us. If people would really play for fun, there wouldn't be M&S. There were just true casuals playing their own way among their own buddies.
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You know what else is cool? Achievements! Vix found this specimen:

Note: No comments will be published about the moron picture, comment only the post. You can still comment on the moron and I'll read it and change/remove the moron part if you are right. But moron-related comment won't be published as it derails the conversation about the original post.

PS: Spinks wrote something wonderful.

34 comments:

nonameform said...

Few days ago I walked into a trap on trade. Some guy was complaining about not being able to get a group to ICC since he doesn't have an achievement. Some people told him to join a guild and get some progress there, but then some other guy joined the discussion.

He told us that he has five level 80 characters, but that he wasn't able to kill LK even once, so he can't get into HC trade pugs that start once in awhile on my server. He also claimed that his guild is good and after I asked him why he keeps saying that it's good even though they never managed to finish it with 30% buff on 10 man, he told me that progress doesn't matter as long as guild is good.

In five minutes I found myself discussing something different that what we were initially talking about and I had to point that out to my opponent who then vanished. Don't know whether he wasn't interested in discussing the actual reasons of his guild inability to kill LK or he realized that it's pointless to use "I have fun with my friends" as a point in an argument about not being able to get a spot in a decent pug.

Also I've seen that on trade "LFM Ulduar 10 drake run. Link ICC 6/12 or more". Yep, ICC progress makes you automatically experienced in every lower tier raid instance. True story.

Anonymous said...

Yesterday I was in similar situation. I was making an extended-on-LK run for friends and friends of friends, so we "can get Kingslayer before the patch 4.0 comes", mostly for alts but also some people who never managed to kill the Lich King yet. The goal was clear, we have an instance with just the last boss left, we're there to get our kill / title / achievement, whatever you call it.

Now there were several people among our "friends" who were notorious for complaining how they can't get their Kingslayer title despite raiding for 10 months.

I sent them all calendar invites at the beginning of the week, about 15 people total.

Now the day comes and we're... 9 people. The ones who lamented the loudest?

One got saved with a crappy PUG and was just sitting in Battlegrounds.

Other didn't even bother to come online despite pestering ONE DAY earlier my main char's raidleader to let him come to LK kill. Why? Because my main's raids one-shot him. And the alt's one wasn't good enough for him...

And rest were people of the kind who never join guild because they "raid when they want" and they "won't plan real life around the game", which means they can't keep to schedules at all. They don't fit into any guild because if they feel like going to pub or cinema at the raid's day, they will, instead of doing it the day before or the day after.

You're for them just a bunch of pixels not a "real person", so it's ok to ignore you or any arrangements made, "it's just a game".

Imagine a person who would come to a sports club not during the days / hours of training but at random hours and complained there's no one to play with them and why can't he play when he wants.

If an activity required 9 or 24 other people, they have to be in the same spot at the same time, and such people just don't care about it. They join first crappiest pug because they want to raid NOW, not another day, not an hour later, it must be NOW, because they feel so.

Those people also never have money, because they can't stand the AH doesn't give money NOW, you need to wait 24 hours before something sells, maybe longer? No way!

Those also people who insist on /roll in raids, they're fierce opponents of guilds and DKP where you "work for your standing", they just wanna stroll there and "feel lucky".

Anyway in the end my alt's group got their Kingslayers for 9 people (1 had it already as he just came to help us) and they were happy, since they were the people who wanted to come, wanted to experience the raid.

The rest... they just want to have excuse to whine, while keeping their carefree attitude towards raiding and arrangements.

Xaxziminrax II said...

You have a bad habit now of using post titles that use slang terms that you condone. Maybe you don't mind them anymore, since you've been wallowing in it, but I do, and it's getting on my nerves. Can't you speak in normal english like you used to? Even not being a native you were pretty good at it.

> if they play a different aspect of the game, why do I bump into them?

Okay, so I agree with what you said later on: They get rewarded for playing your aspect of the game. M&S naturally play for reward, and not for the activity itself, therefore won't go out and solo things by shooting off random abilities, they'll instead do it where they get tier.

I feel inclined to point out that the only two ways to stop this would to be offer reward for soloing things ("Every 100 mobs soloed gives you a badge" or "dailies give badges" like in Shattered Sun) or remove reward from your aspect of the game. If we gave no loot/badges from unguilded raiding, M&S could only run it with other M&S, except for the one week per guild that they could sneak their way into a decent raiding guild before you realize they're doing <900 dps and gkick them. Both options sound equally good. Former more than the latter, as then both M&S AND you get what they want, without interfering with each other.


Second, your percentage paragraph is kind of confusing. I understand what you mean by breaking it down, but to sound more coherent you might want to run double over statistics just so they're laid out as simply as possible.

> Such players would keep playing that way without rewards.

I imagine this to be the test of a 'good' game, a game played without reward. Do you remember the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES? You could not save the game, and the score was just a number in the corner of your screen. You might take a secret passage or you might not, depending on which you were in the mood for, never because of the reward of each.

And finally, I don't understand:

>There were just true casuals playing their own way among their own buddies.

I feel our article might be better by just clipping this sentence off; the sentence before it really drives the point home effectively, anyways.

Anonymous said...

I was always wondering why do people join the raiding guild and then watch TV during the raids. It makes me angry often but I enjoy the fights so much I continue to play. Probably you are right at this point.

Sean said...

I must say, Gevlon's probably hit the mark here. The M&S want shiny epics, but instead of working towards it, wants to be carried.

Anonymous said...

I find the numbers of M+S playing during the time I am online increases during school holidays leading me to believe that the maturity/age of the player is the problem and that time will cure most if not all of them.

Squishalot said...

I'm more surprised that you've never seen people advertising for 'friendly, non elitist' guilds. There are plenty of guilds out there along those lines, who do actively recruit, and they get members purely *because* people don't want the elitist min/maxing community.

Having said that, you can argue it from two different ways. To answer the question of why you're bumping into them, consider instead that it's because you're PuG'ing, quite simply. Run premades all you like, and you'll never have to deal with an M&S ever again.

Anonymous said...

I used to raid with one of the good guilds for severals years. The whole keeping to schedule part got to me badly. Even though it has been over a year since I stopped hardcore raiding, I still get this exhilarating feeling of freedom, when I know I don't have to log in just to raid. I still play several days a week, but I also know I don't have to and sometimes I just don't. I also have several real life commitments, which occasionally interfere with my ability to play, but that's another story.

Unfortunately this also means that I need to make do with pugs when I want to raid, and boy does this suck. Ninjas, leavers, just plain horrible players, obnoxious people calling other people names in raid chat, I have seen it all. And I have pretty much had enough.

I started looking at guilds again. There seems to mostly be two kind of guilds. The first type are the kind of hardcore raiding guilds demanding pretty much 90% attendance many days a week especially when new content comes. I really don't want to have to commit to 4 days a week, always, again. The other type are the "friendly, non elitist" guilds as pointed out by Squishalot. These guilds tend to be the ones recruiting in trade and probably having annoying pug like raids, based on the whisper for invite announcements. If I joined one of these, wouldn't be much different from the trade pugs. So where does one fit if one is looking for the serious raiding atmoshpere of kind of harcore guilds but slightly less commitment? "Find a guild" is easier said than done.

Unknown said...

Speaking about Starcraft II, that game at least has natural way to keep the Pro together with the Pro and M&S (or just truly less skilled people) together with other M&S - ranking system.

There simply is no way M&S can just happen to enter top 1% rated game and get carried there to victory.

No matter what your game knowledge and APM is - you are still good to play 1v1 games vs opponent of approximately the same skill. M&S simply can't hurt you, unless you do some random 3v3 games.

Of course, even a 5-man dungeon skill rating system would not work too well in WoW, since eventually all the M&S would be permanently locked in wipe-fest groups and eventually would quit the "unfun" game.

In case of SC2 Blizzard can't really care less about some M&S, who have already paid full price for the game, but can't even complete "easy" difficulty solo campaign.

Thus, in WoW the only way to avoid M&S is explicitly not to group with them in any content, where it is possible.

ardoRic said...

"Of course, even a 5-man dungeon skill rating system would not work too well in WoW, since eventually all the M&S would be permanently locked in wipe-fest groups and eventually would quit the "unfun" game."

I can't understand why you seem to think this is bad. Bring it on, PLEASE!

Let the M&S be in wipe-fest groups and either step up their game and get to the non-wipe-fest groups or leave. Sounds awfully good to me.

Anonymous said...

"if they play a different aspect of the game, why do I bump into them?"

Why are you pugging? Don't you have a guild full of people who think like you? You can disable all the channels and stick to your guild's chat. You can isolate yourself from such players. Why don't you?

Gevlon said...

To the people who say "why pug?": I don't really. However the question was not how to defend ourselves against their invasion, it was why do they invade?

@ArdoRic: it would be bad because a genuine newbie also has low skill and has to start playing with the lolling filth who can't teach them anything, provide wipefest and bitch about their low gearscore. In a PvP game rating is possible as the newbie play against the M&S.

Squishalot said...

But Gevlon - who's invading, you or them? PuGs are random groups - you walk in knowing that you're going to get a random subset of the WoW universe. You don't walk in assuming that you're going to get four smart, intelligent min/maxing players. That would be irrational.

If you're not pugging, then the M&S shouldn't bother your raiding / heroic farming experience. End of story.

Anonymous said...

Right on Gevlon.

It is possible to up the dificulty so that only raids that reach above 90% of their potential are able get loot.

M&S would quit or improve if the only way to get rewards was to not be a M&S.

Blizzard sure do not want them quiting tho.

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: they invade as they couldn't complete the content by themselves. So they don't belong there objectively.

Anonymous said...

They invade your group because that is where the respect is. You said it yourself that they play for respect, in other words, for gear and other symbols of power. Their fun is getting respect.

ardoRic said...

Gevlon, the place for newbies (on SC2) is the Practice League. They get to do up to 50 unranked games to hone their skills. After that (or when they feel like they're ready) they do 5* Placement Matches which put them in a division with people with similar skill (results on the placement matches).

While not exactly in this way, something similar might work for newbies in WoW to give us all "ranked" grouping.

* I think, haven't gotten to those on SC2 yet

Charles Miller said...

Sometimes, Gevlon, I wonder if you actually understand the concept of 'fun'.

Different people find different things fun, and when you don't understand what someone else sees in a particular activity, it's really easy to dismiss it as the result of some kind of sordid ulterior motive rather than being intrinsically enjoyable to them.

For example, I find making gold in WoW as boring as bat-shit. Why would I want that kind of spreadsheet-watching job as part of a game? Pretty much everything in the game that costs the kind of money you can't make just by walking around is a pointless gold sink anyway.

I could dismiss that kind of activity as ePeen-waving over who can get the most completely meaningless ones and zeroes on some server in Southern California. Or I could accept that some people enjoy being virtual accountants and let them have their fun.

Some people like collecting things. The appeal of collecting is apparent in a myriad of pointless pursuits from collectable cards to Pokémon. It's no surprise that people on WoW want to collect gear or achievements just for the sake of doing so.

Some people play the game for the storytelling, artwork and design. They don't want to be challenged more than is necessary to add variety and keep them interested, they want to enjoy the content that the game delivers.

Some people play the game for the social interaction. It's a "Third Place" where they can wind down after school or work and chill out with like-minded people while playing a game with them.

All of these traits will bring someone into conflict with people who play the game in order to get "good at the game", because while their goals are not the same, the stuff they want occupies the same space.

Part of the value proposition of joining a PUG is that you're going to be grouped with people who do not share your goals. To put it into terms that may be more familiar, you are trading the convenience of having a mass of strangers to group with for the cost of many of them not valuing the same aspects of the game as you do.

Unknown said...

@ardoRic

From perspective of good non-M&S players this system would be awesome.

However, such system would eventually frustrate most of M&S, since there would be no way for them to get carried as it is now, where LFD nearly always puts 2-3 overgeared people to carry the "undergeareds". And frustrated M&S is more likely to stop paying for "unfun" games.

It's just more subscriptions for Blizzard.

Unknown said...

@Charles Miller

I perfectly understand that different people find different aspects of the game fun.

However, when it comes to fun in groups, it is so that their fun ends, where my fun starts!

Although a generic Arthusdk creature can find it fun to cluelessly /faceroll for 10% of his theoretical performance, execute a raid-wiping (non)action three times in a row, while getting high on nice spell effects on screen, his actions do greatly diminish the fun of 4/9/24 other people.

As I said, I totally do not mind the M&S being herded together in whatever fun activities they chose as long as I am not directly near them.

Anonymous said...

If you covet the reward for doing something, but don't enjoy and therefore (or perhaps the implication goes the other way) don't enjoy doing, you have a problem. You can either solve this by deciding the reward is not worth it, or you can solve it by deciding the reward is worth it and find some way to complete the something in question.

The normal, real-world way of doing this would obviously be to grit your teeth together and work on getting better at the activity in question so that you can complete it and claim your reward, but in with the random dungeon system you also have the option of gathering a group of four people, and hope that some of them are good enough and willing to essentially do the activity for you.

As the content is fairly easy and many people fairly overgeared, usually the group is, in fact, good enough. However, most people aren't inherently willing to do drag people along, which is why Blizzard, who wants people to keep on playing and hence to have fun in whatever way they want, give them an incentive: it's usually easier to just go along with a sub-optimal group than to form a new one because of deserter debuffs, queue times, kick timers and so on.

Had Blizzard genuinely wanted people to have a choice (outside of forming a guild of like-minded people, of course) between playing dungeons for the inherent fun and playing them for rewards, they could simply have offered two types of dungeon: one with, say, no loot or any kind of reward and preset gear and one 'ordinary' dungeon. The people who want rewards will have to queue for the latter, and the people who enjoy the dungeons themselves will queue for the former. The people who enjoy both the rewards and the dungeons will have to make a decision between what's important to them or just form a guild.

Of course, Blizzard doesn't do this, because they rationally enough want paying customers, so they make sure everybody has fun in the sense that they get enough of what they like without more work than they are willing to do so that they keep subscribing, which means somebody will have to carry them. LFD is an elegant way of doing this from their perspective. An excellent post by Gevlon.

(Though I want to complain that clicks/minute isn't the most important factor in SC2, I recognize that it's somewhat important and that that's not the point of the post either.)

Anonymous said...

@Jana

Then the LFD system is not for you. What you are asking for when you join a group is "I want to play this instance, and I trade the convenience of putting together a group of people who play the way I want them to play for getting any group for this instance fast". You can't really claim your fun is any more valid than their fun is (though I guess you can say it's purer in some sense). If you want a good group, make one. If you want a fast group, use LFD.

Michael Young said...

It's not much of a controversy to say that there are horrible, horrible players out there. What I take issue with is how you equate this group with socials.

Ima describe a simple two variable cross table. Made up numbers, just to illustrate the point I want to make. There are socials and loners. I can't claim to know the ratio of the two, but I'd bet there are far more socials than loners. Among socials, 60% are competent, 40% are horrible. Among loners, 80% are competent, 20% are horrible.

So loners tend to be more competent, socials tend to be less competent. That's what I see as the basis of your thoughts on socials. But you're condemning all the competent socials along with the horrible socials, and that's doing them a disservice. You should re-target your annoyance at the trait that is the problem: horrible gameplay, whether from a social or a loner.

I am a social, and I play this game with excellence. Do you really approve of a loner who is horrible over a social who is competent?

Big Heals said...

My favorite attention seeker is the "I'm drunk or high" self declaration right at the start of the instance. Translates too, "I'm going to suck and then laugh when people point it out."

Grim said...

@Anonymous
The "gather a group and hope they do the work for me" approach is also available IRL and even more so than in WoW. In WoW you need at least 2 competent people to get through a 5man (and generally more than 4 for a 10man). IRL the ratio is often lower than that.

Google "pareto principle" for more info.

Glyph, the Architect said...

@ardoRic

" "Of course, even a 5-man dungeon skill rating system would not work too well in WoW, since eventually all the M&S would be permanently locked in wipe-fest groups and eventually would quit the "unfun" game."

I can't understand why you seem to think this is bad. Bring it on, PLEASE!"

It is bad because then Blizzard loses a ton of money. Sure, it would be great for us, but if it's going to lose a ton of money, Blizzard will never implement it.

Andrei said...

@Gevlon
"if they play a different aspect of the game, why do I bump into them?"

In RL do you ever bump into people that do not share your goals in life? Perhaps, you should re-visit tragedy of commons concept.

"yet I don't ruin any SC2 fan's game as I'm not playing"

Players that you label as M&S ruin your WoW experience only in your perception (which maybe a reality for you). But the fact is that they are WoW subscribers in equal standing and have full rights to enjoy the game the way they want. Start dealing with it or leave the game. And assuming that M&S constitute a majority of WoW population they carry WoW minorities - hard core raiders, self-proclaimed goblins, pro-plyaers, etc. By providing most of the subscription revenue for Blizzard to develop new content.


"...they invade as they couldn't complete the content by themselves. So they don't belong there objectively."

You cannot complete the content by yourself either. I haven't seen you sporting HM LK kill. So you "don't belong there objectively".

Wilson said...

Wow. Last spring, 10% of players were rated higher than the "M&S". Now we're down to only 5%. That's a 50% casualty rate, in only a few months! Oh, the humanity!

In all serious, if you're going to continue to use made-up statistics, at least give enough of a damn to be consistent. Using different numbers just emphasizes that you are making them up, and only the mentally deficient are going to be impressed.

Energybomb said...

@michael young

Ok, any reason provided, or heck even evidence, behind WHY 20% of the loners are asocial?

Because all asocials I know either are top raiders and pvp'rs or just log for some dailies and log off.

Gevlon said...

@Wilson: read before you troll. 5% is the self-determined. I did not say that the other 95% are M&S, they are the socials. Actually then next paragraph is about those who are socials and NOT M&S.

@Andrei: no I don't bump into such people. Of course I see them on the street or in a store, but did I complain that they are in Dalaran? They surely don't try to get to my workplace.

Also, I DON'T belong to LK HM kill. Have you seen me going there and ruining the tries of topguild raiders?

I've never said they don't belong to WoW, they don't belong to my raid.

Wilson said...

Well let me see if I have this right. Today you are saying that "most" socials are the "M&S". On April 20, you said "Who are the other 65-70% [of the playerbase]? Why are they useless? They are socials and they are not useless because of themselves. They are useless because they are unable to get rid of the previously mentioned 25-30% [filth and M&S]."

So, yes, I do say that your numbers are both made-up and lack consistency. Or else it is your definitions which lack consistency. Same result, either way.

Andrei said...

@Gevlon

"Of course I see them on the street or in a store, but did I complain that they are in Dalaran?"

Yes you did. Implicitly if not explicitly. After all it is one your criteria to categorize players as M&S or "socials" - using a special lol-based lexicon in the trade chat while sitting in Dalaran.

"They surely don't try to get to my workplace."

All people at your workplace have life goals aligned with yours? Perhaps you are lucky (though you stated otherwise in an earlier post) to find a perfect workplace.

"I've never said they don't belong to WoW, they don't belong to my raid."

You statement "I would be a terrible SC2 player, yet I don't ruin any SC2 fan's game as I'm not playing." suggested a solution for M&S: if you can't or don't bother to get any good at WoW then don't play the game. Even if you didn't mean that you still suggest that bad (in your arbitrary standards) players should refrain or be forced out of some aspects of the game. And these said aspects happen to be the ones that WoTLK pigeonholed players into - raiding and heroic dungeon farming.

Jim said...

@Gevlon
"I've never said they don't belong in Wow, they don’t belong in my raid."

Why do you include them in your raid? If you only allow like minded individuals into your raids then you will never have to deal with people with different ideas of fun than you. If you are encountering them in random pugs then it is your own fault for joining a group that might have different ideas of fun than you. There are plenty of no nonsense hardcore raid guilds where you would never need to interact with such people you disdain.

You seem to be blaming others for your own failings.

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: "@Squishalot: they invade as they couldn't complete the content by themselves. So they don't belong there objectively."

That's not invading, that's called 'progression'. And most of them can complete a heroic anyway.

Again, if you're pugging, you only have yourself to blame for placing your happiness in the hands of random strangers.