Is the majority of people just plain awful at WoW?

[Dragon Claws]

Well, I just typed out a reply while queuing for a random heroic for AP. It basically said, "Yep players are pretty bad but even kara is fairly easy. Last night i healed kara with 13 points in my resto weapon and only boomkin trinkets with dps average under 200k. (Main bear, off boom, lolresto) Granted we only got through curator before planning to finish it tonight."

Then I got queued into heroic maw of souls with two DH and a DK for dps with a prot paladin tank. I had to heal for an average of 180k over the dungeon and 200k+ on certain bosses. I did not know it was possible to take that much damage, even if you stood in everything. On Helya we had two big tentacles up with nobody in melee range both spamming slam on the group. I've been in entire mythic +'s requiring less healing than that. It was just heroic.

So, Dragon Claws, I change my opinion now, you might just be correct to wait for those nerfs.

Edit: Forgot to say we had a 5 minute trash pull, the healer / fear shout guys on the deck of the ship. Just the two pull, nothing crazy. We eventually powered through the healing added with the fears as zero interrupts or stuns were used in a group with 3 melee and a prot paladin.

I'm just hoping they're addressed soon. It's not fun having a new instance with really good gear that I can't get because I have to rely on foamhat wearing idiots.

[MoanaLisa]

Half of everyone is below average. This basic fact seems to escape a lot of people.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

And people wonder why the community is toxic.

Expecting people to not be dead-weight is toxic? What a fascinating perspective.

[MoanaLisa]

Expecting people to not be dead-weight is toxic? What a fascinating perspective.

Players arrogant enough to expect all other players to live up to their standards, whatever they are, can be pretty annoying. That's fine and all in a guild but in a game the size of WoW it's unrealistic to expect that from all players (pro tip: it sets your skill level up as the lowest common denominator) and used by too many to exercise their egos at someone else's expense. So yes, toxic is one word for it.

[Emaias]

I wouldn't say that they are terrible, but it's that they choose not to put forth effort and expect things to be given to them, or brought to the level they want it at. Many many MANY people on this forum (I'd say very well over half) fit this role. I play maybe 10 hours a week and I'm 870 ILevel, cleared 7/7 H EN, cleared Kara three times and have completed Nightbane. I haven't done everything but I've done what most people claim is for "hardcore" only. This game isn't hard you just have to be willing to put forth effort.

[Deleted]

The game today outright trains players to be awful. The whole game is a aoe fest, it may aswell be called God of War or some action game

The game does not assert its mechanics until the last 0.1% of the game, where mechanics such as silence, CC, stuns, moving out of shit, focus fire matter. Even 5 man mythics can be done through pure zerging.


I dont care how anyone feels about Vanilla, or how sick and tired they are of hearing about it: That version of WoW absolutely demanded you knew these concepts as early as lvl 30-40. As soon as classes got CC, the game would ramp up the difficulty, expecting you to utilize your abilities. Which is how all games function, when you get a new powerup in Mario, you are expected to learn it, use it and master it. You dont just get to ignore it, and keep mashing buttons.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Players arrogant enough to expect all other players to live up to their standards, whatever they are, can be pretty annoying. That's fine and all in a guild but in a game the size of WoW it's unrealistic to expect that from all players (pro tip: it sets your skill level up as the lowest common denominator) and used by too many to exercise their egos at someone else's expense. So yes, toxic is one word for it.

How do you strike a balance between expecting people to be capable of basic math and reading, or assuming they're dumb/lazy? I honestly have a lot of trouble with this, I don't know what the middle ground is for something like this.

[barackohmama]

Just remember you used to be one of those bad players at one point. People learn by mistakes and with time. But there will always be new players coming to the game.

[MoanaLisa]

How do you strike a balance between expecting people to be capable of basic math and reading, or assuming they're dumb/lazy? I honestly have a lot of trouble with this, I don't know what the middle ground is for something like this.

Expect the worst and once in a while be surprised. The thing is I have a decent group of friends and family in the game so I don't venture out into Group Finder or queue for random stuff very often. I will say though that if the expectation is that they are dumb/lazy, you've probably judged them to the point where even if they put in an average performance in a group and managed to stay out of fire/puddles you might think worse of them. It's different with everyone. Sometimes lack of knowledge and experience is mistaken for lazy/dumb. That's unfair. A lot of people subscribe to the idea that doing research to play a game isn't fun and I don't think they're wrong for thinking that.

If you have a lot of expectations of other players it's probably best to be in a guild. If you raid mythic it's just going to be a fact that 80%-90% of nearly everyone you group with is going to be worse than you. If you raid at any sort of organized level that might drop to 65%-75%.

[Kaiede]

Sometimes lack of knowledge and experience is mistaken for lazy/dumb. That's unfair. A lot of people subscribe to the idea that doing research to play a game isn't fun and I don't think they're wrong for thinking that.

I prefer a game provide me with enough feedback so that I can tackle the challenge ahead of me, so throw me in that bucket. If the game doesn't provide enough feedback for me to understand how I failed, to the point where I need to research, that's partly on the game's UI (parsing combat logs full of noise is doable, but tedious for example, when the death recap fails). It also isn't nearly as rewarding to overcome a challenge if the approach is "do this dance, so long as you don't screw up, you profit." It also tends to mean you miss out on the details Blizz is putting in to try to teach you the mechanics of an encounter because you don't need to pay attention beyond the plan you are being told to execute.

I'll add that I tend to stick with guild runs, mostly because PuGs are just not fun. You throw X random people together who have different ideas of what the run should look like, and quite a few expect it to go their way, and will be nasty if it isn't.

It's also one of the issues I have with some 4X games these days. The underlying model is more complicated than in earlier games, and so you get more distanced from the model and have less ability to understand it without more complicated black box experimentation. Some people like that. But I'd prefer it if more of these games did a better job using the UI to teach you (and not through tutorials) what your changes did to the underlying model, so I didn't feel like I needed a guide or take detailed notes to build up my knowledge of the underlying model.

[xpose]

Players arrogant enough to expect all other players to live up to their standards, whatever they are, can be pretty annoying. That's fine and all in a guild but in a game the size of WoW it's unrealistic to expect that from all players (pro tip: it sets your skill level up as the lowest common denominator) and used by too many to exercise their egos at someone else's expense. So yes, toxic is one word for it.

Is it so much to ask that players live up to the AVERAGE of what other players their same item level are doing? I don't think so.


Why is it wrong to call out some shitter 870 ret who only does 130k dps? He knows what his limitations are and he knows he will get invites based on the item level in his inventory but he still feels the need to queue into +5 or higher mythics and weight down the entire group.


If the community is toxic then its a product of other players being greedy with what they think they can get away with while making group content for others miserable.

[Sansnom]

Expecting people to not be dead-weight is toxic? What a fascinating perspective.

Seeing anyone who does not measure to your standard is considered a dead-weight? What a fascinating perspective.

[Kaiede]

Is it so much to ask that players live up to the AVERAGE of what other players their same item level are doing? I don't think so.

Is it too much to ask for a reasonable minimum output for certain content? No. But I would suggest setting a goalpost that is by definition, the middle of the bell curve is unobtainable, also by definition. So asking that a chunk of the population somehow break statistics is a little weird, and I do think unreasonable.

I would probably suggest taking a different approach to filtering prospects for PuGs. My server in the past has created social circles for PuGs with the intent of making it easier to find folks who were capable of doing the more difficult content specifically to fill holes in raids and the like. But I guess we just want to be able to assign numbers to folks and use that as a guide (ilvl) as to what their capability is so we can go go go and not have to also bear responsibility for vetting our choices of who to run with?

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Seeing anyone who does not measure to your standard is considered a dead-weight? What a fascinating perspective.

Really? Is logic that foreign a concept to you?

[Deleted]

Players arrogant enough to expect all other players to live up to their standards, whatever they are, can be pretty annoying. That's fine and all in a guild but in a game the size of WoW it's unrealistic to expect that from all players (pro tip: it sets your skill level up as the lowest common denominator) and used by too many to exercise their egos at someone else's expense. So yes, toxic is one word for it.

Expecting to read the Dungeon Journal before you go into the Dungeon/Raid is asked too much, I would guess nearly no one is reading it. Just asking that a Player researches just a little bit how to play his class with his chosen Specc, and reading the Dungeon Journal should not be an unrealistic expectation - assuming we are talking normal raids / mythic Dungeons. The joke that is HC and LFR for sure doesn't need anything like that, and I have experienced a lot more toxic behavior in those anonymous Groups than in any PUG I run with.

That's why I always get a laugh out of Single-Players demanding yet even more LFR and HC Dung's - those are the worst places with the worst part of the community - because there is no incentive to be nice, so People just let their natural Ass-Hatness shine .

[MoanaLisa]

Is it so much to ask that players live up to the AVERAGE of what other players their same item level are doing? I don't think so.

Mathematically, yes it is.

[Gilthresa]

Seeing anyone who does not measure to your standard is considered a dead-weight? What a fascinating perspective.

Yes, if people can't do basic shit like avoid mechanics and do at least somewhat passable dps - they are dead weight.

[Deleted]

The older I get the more I realise the vast majority of people are terrible at the vast majority of everything they do and there's no doubt somewhere in the grand scheme of things every single person that thinks they're the minority... Aren't.

[Armourboy]

I wouldn't say that they are terrible, but it's that they choose not to put forth effort and expect things to be given to them, or brought to the level they want it at. Many many MANY people on this forum (I'd say very well over half) fit this role. I play maybe 10 hours a week and I'm 870 ILevel, cleared 7/7 H EN, cleared Kara three times and have completed Nightbane. I haven't done everything but I've done what most people claim is for "hardcore" only. This game isn't hard you just have to be willing to put forth effort.

You seem to have left out one other word with this expansion, luck. I have done all of that outside of finishing Kara ( couple of guys in the group went on vacation) and I'm only 858 ilevel. Now if I was willing to use gear that wasn't optimal then I could push it on up to 861, but my DPS would actually drop.

I think people really need to keep in mind that in this expansion at least ilevel as a barometer is a horrible way to judge things. Take for instance my spec Fire Mage. You could take someone and throw them in 880 gear full of haste, mastery and versatility and someone that gears properly at 860 is going to blow their doors off, and because of ilevel you are going to say that person stinks, when in reality the game is so jacked up on some specs that ilevel can be hindrance. I know, I know, do research but then I sit around and wonder why is a game set up to not tell you a dang thing about a subject as important as stat weights?

Thing is I'm betting the vast majority on this site have been playing MMO's or at least WoW for a while. You know that when a patch hits you need to check things out to make sure something didn't change. You know that you need to keep an eye on theorycraft to stay at optimum, and you know what addons to use to help you with that as well.

There is nothing in the game that says " hey if you want to play you need to pick up some version of these addons, oh and you need to keep several sites bookmarked so you can check back to figure out how you should gear, what talents you should pick, what enchants to use and which rotation is optimal ".

I've seen it with every single player base in every single MMO that has ever existed. The longer the game exists the more " elite " the player base becomes. They reach a point where they know exactly where to go, what to do, where to look, etc. They know how the Devs think so they know what too look for on fights they have never done. I saw it in SWG, I saw it in FFO, EQ, and WoW. We know so we are guilty of thinking everyone knows.

Now if you are a first time player, especially if it is your first MMO, think just how behind you are. If you aren't the type of person to just naturally research something, you would have no clue. You could play for months with no realy idea that you are doing it wrong. Nothing tells you you are until you get into max level content and someone tells you you suck. BTW those insults generally never come with a way to get better.

Maybe if people want the overall community to get better then they need to invest some time in teaching people how things work in a nice way rather than being so combative all of the time. Some people you can't help, trust me I've had guilds full of them at one time or another, but when the conversation starts with " hey you suck lawlz " of course things are going to be bad. We are guilty of creating much of the problem we bitch about, and that's with all MMO's, not just WoW.

[Deleted]

Expect the worst and once in a while be surprised. The thing is I have a decent group of friends and family in the game so I don't venture out into Group Finder or queue for random stuff very often. I will say though that if the expectation is that they are dumb/lazy, you've probably judged them to the point where even if they put in an average performance in a group and managed to stay out of fire/puddles you might think worse of them. It's different with everyone. Sometimes lack of knowledge and experience is mistaken for lazy/dumb. That's unfair. A lot of people subscribe to the idea that doing research to play a game isn't fun and I don't think they're wrong for thinking that.

I don't quite agree with this. I am fine if dps are at least do something, but then there are those who are almost useless. Like those who come to mythic with below 100k dps. A healing spec with 3 buttons can beat that.

Yes 50% of the people will be worse than average, but the spread is what is so annoying. Like in mythic dps rankings you could increase your dps by 10% but jump up 30-40% in rankings (These numbers aren't real, but an example). There is a lowest level you would expect people to reach because of how little it requires.