Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Speak up!

I'm always surprised how scared people of confrontation. It's mostly explained by sociality itself: if you disagree with someone, he will have negative feelings for you. So people prefer even completely stupid things than disagreeing others.

However in an environment that have even a spark of rationality, like a workplace or in any decent guild confrontation based on facts is always preferred than doing something stupid.

We had a weird raid because of that. It was Beth'litac farm who supposed to be killed in maximum 3 tries, and not spend 2 hours on her. 80% of the wipes was because of the healer up. He found various ways to die or let his tank die. I fined him, no effect. Finally I replaced him. Despite he was one of the best healers and was replaced with someone who use to pay lot of fail fees, the boss was down in 2 tries.

After replacement he whispered that going up was really bad for him and he somehow couldn't do the task. Wonderful. If he could say it after 2 wipes the boss would be dead an hour ago and he could have been on the kill, getting his 1800G share of the pot. But he remained silent, leaving me in the belief that he can do it, just need to concentrate more or finally grasp that missing part of the job. I could have sent the other healer up (who finally went up and done perfectly). I could go up and learn that part of the fight. Finally, I could replace him and then he'd have several hundred gold and an hour time more.

But no, he choose not to speak up against the "boss" who sent him up. He did what he could, hoping that something will happen and save the day. It never does.

If you know something that the boss doesn't, speak up! He will be grateful. If not, he is an idiot and you shall leave his domain anyway.

Also, while "sorry I can't do it" is shameful, it's definitely less shameful than failing again and again. If you tell it, you allow the boss or the others to somehow fix the problem. I'm sure that "the priest did not want the hard job" is less remembered than "the priest failed 8x".

A more technical version of not speaking up is mentioning something with "maybe" or "between the lines" and when it's ignored, assume that it was rejected. No, rejection means rejection, ignoring means ignoring. The leader simply lost your communication between 10 other lines aimed to him, including random "cud u plz inv me 2 guld" crap. If you did not get an answer, ask again. When readycheck comes, press "not ready" and ask again. Don't let it go away until properly (even if negatively) answered.


PS: the guild's no attendance rule applies to roles. No one can blame you if you don't want a particular role. It's true that you can be replaced by someone who does it, but it does not decrease your chances on other bosses at all.

13 comments:

Squishalot said...

Gevlon, what happened to the rule where someone who fails more than x3 times in a single raid is sat out? Isn't this a cut and dry case of a raid leader failing to enforce the rules, thus leading to time being wasted?

Gevlon said...

It refers to written failures like standing in the fire. Simply "not enough healing" or "I ran up too late" doesn't qualify as fail.

maxim said...

"Not enough healing" is hard to quantify, therefore cannot be a part of the official ruleset.

However, failing to click on the clickable thing, or failing to notice that the web under you is burning, or failing to notice a hole - are all very binary things that can be quantified just as easily as "standing in fire".

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One thing that needs mentioning in regard to the meat of the post is that one of other reasons people don't speak up is that they don't want to be excluded from game experiences.

If that healer spoke up on Beth'tilac, you'd put him on the ground level and he'd never see the top of the web again. Obviously, now he'd never see it anyway, but he got to spend a couple of hours worth' of tries on it. So his decision to silently grind it out served to enrich his gaming experience, even if it cost the raid.

Unacceptable in a raid focused guild? Probably. But you need to remember that every player in PuG is out for his personal enjoyment. Unfathomable as it may be, for some, this notion doesn't necessarily correlate with successful raiding.

Anonymous said...

Tank Deaths: In the case of Beth'tilac, the tank should easily be able to survive for 10 or more seconds after he's up. If he doesn't, he needs to learn to use cooldowns and apply his 2 tanking debuffs.

Falling Down: Get a new version of DBM and you simply can't miss the meteors.

Cathfaern said...

I really think that "I ran up too late" on beth is a failure. It's like move out from the fire too late (or not stack on time, etc). It's essential for the healer to move up in time (with the tank), it's one of the core mechanism of the fight.

Anonymous said...

"Also, while "sorry I can't do it" is shameful, it's definitely less shameful than failing again and again."

Shameful is social nonsense, it's feeling bad about what your peers think.

I'm one of the most stable dps in our 25m raid that clears most of the hardmodes any tier. On the pigeon fight (always forget name of the boss, where you have to fly) I was tasked to go grab the feathers and chase the bird while flying. After 2 attempts I said (on teamspeak, not in a whisper): "sorry guys, I'm crap with flying gimmicks, please either put me downstairs or replace me'. While all people in our raid can be pretty harsh and give shit when someone fails, there wasn't a single 'shameful' moment for me. I'm simple not good at 3D flying fights like Eye of Eternity, Oculus last boss, ... whereas I failed less than the average on the same boss his tornado phase. By saying so I saved the raid a couple of wipes and valuable progress time.

That's just how the game goes, both for pvp and pve. You excel in certain areas, while you are crap at certain others.

Babar said...

Isn't this also the responsability of the raid leader? I raid lead myself, and if something clearly isn't working, then I always stop between tries to find out how to fix it.

How it's even possible on a farm boss when you know how it is supposed to work, why not just swap the healer going up with another healer after a few tries? Or better yet, send another healer up as soon as spinners are dead since the healing needed on the ground after that is almost zero?

I just can't understand how nobody in the raid thought it was weird that something trivial suddenly wasn't, but waited 2 hours to actually do something about it.

Deepcut said...

They have you there as a raid leader to decide when to replace them, so they figure you will. Why bother telling anyone? You have so many rules, and people probably assume if they're in the raid they're doing everything right (even though in this particular instance the healer said he was having a bad day or whatever).

Silverthorn said...

This is evidence of the kinder, more rational Gevlon. There was a situation that was analyzed and solved in-game, with post-game analysis on how it could have been mitigated or avoided altogether in the first place.

This is great stuff. And nowhere did I see profanity and rude behavior from Gevlon. Thanks, keep up the good work!

chewy said...

What have I learned from this post ? If you can't do something then speak up and you will be excused ?

Had I been asked before today, what would happen in Gevlon's raid if someone fails ? I would have said kicking is too good for them, fine them and then kick them that's the impression you give, failure isn't tolerated. But now you appear to be saying that some failure is tolerated.

I can entirely see why this poor specimen didn't want to speak out, he probably had no idea if it would be frowned upon or accommodated. With the benefit of hindsight it would have been better had he said something but in the pressure of the moment he probably felt he'd keep on trying and trying and trying... all the time he can see the wipes clocking up but by now he's trapped in a spiral of failure, waiting for a miracle to rescue him.

Bumpy said...

I can attest to this, agreeing with Zenga, we were doing Blackrock Caverns on the Boss Corla (where you stand in the beams), it was my first time doing heroic, and this was far more difficult (for me?) than in normal.
After wiping the party 3 or 4 times, I finally figured out the mechanic. But the whole time, I'm asking what am I doing wrong, when do I need to break, what direction do I go.
Luckily it was a guild run, and pretty forgiving, but it gave me time to practice and learn the mechanic so the next time we do it I'll do better.

For heroics and raids, someone will have trouble somewhere so you either take the time to learn the mechanic (and hopefully the rest of the raid doesn't mind wiping) or simply go, I can't do this, have someone else try.

If you're silent, then no one will know you really are trying to figure it out, however I'm not sure how much patience a full raid group would have with someone who says they are trying to get it right, but end up wiping the raid a few times.

There is really no "practice mode" for this sort of stuff.

As to the auto-kick/you fail comment from Chewy, this is reserved for folks who just don't care (i stood in fire and died lol).

If someone is actually trying to learn to play, they should be given the chance.

Bronte said...

"Also, while "sorry I can't do it" is shameful, it's definitely less shameful than failing again and again."

This is probably the worst. I recall a Healadin who continued to screw-up and when confronted, simply said he was learning the ropes (after 4 weeks of raiding) and that a guild should support its weakest links, not chastise them. Understandably he didn't last long in the guild.

Anonymous said...

You totally should read Malcolm Gladwell, who has a chapter about this whole phenomenon:
http://www.whatsbestnext.com/2009/06/mitigated-speech-and-plane-crashes/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitigated_Speech