LFR -> Flex -> Normal -> Heroic: Why?

[clevin]

Imagine the choice is between a normal mode guild (that raids flexi every rest first) and a normal mode guild which just wants to raid normals.

Which one would you join and/or stay with, as one of the raiders who doesn't always get a spot in normals?

I'm not saying people will be so cynical as to jump ship on the evening of 5.4. What I see happening is this. Normie guild 1 won't do flexi, they are focused on progression. Normie guild 2 does flexi first, then does normals. After reset, the benched players from normie guild 1 get asked to join the flexi groups raid (cos why not?) either through a friend or via trade chat. After a few weeks of this, the benched raiders are raiding more with the friends/pug than they are with their own guild. It's only natural at that point for them to move on.

What is also likely to happen is that the guild who wanted to stick to just normals will see their raiders eyeing the exits and change strategy themselves to keep the bench. This will then also make them a flexi first, normals second type of guild. Either way, 10 man normals be fucked if this is the situation, especially the more casual end because they simply won't have time to clear both flex and normals even if they wanted to. Normals (it looks to me) are going to be an afterthought - both for the new flexi class and for the HC crowd. It'll be a lot like the current 25 man situation - very few normal mode 25 mans exist.

I think you're right here. In 6.0 there might be normals, but I anticipate that there will be a lot of folks LFRing, a ton of regular raiders running Flex, a small number of people running normals and about the same number of heroic raids as now. The people running 10N in 6.0 will mostly intend to move to heroics... the number of guilds who spend most of the tie clearing normal mode will simply move to Flex where they can progress faster with fewer wipes and headaches and don't have to mess with who to take and who to bench when more than 10 people signup.

People run heroics for the challenge... the kind of people who like a challenge will migrate to heroic guilds. The kind who have been raiding normals for fun, a bit of challenge and social interaction simply don't have any reason to run normals. They can get all of that in flex.

[Slant]

E
To a certain extent this has happened already. The level of skill in the game among the top guilds in the world is insane. Because they are competing with each other, they are pushing the limits of what is possible. For those of us with limited time to devote to the game, we can't even come close. And with every day that passes, the gap is getting bigger....

Hard misquote there... be careful about that in the future.

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I don't believe, and have made my case for why, the addition of LFR and Flex == idiocy. Ergo, what I am doing cannot be classified as "sitting back and accepting all idiocy".



True. But unless you understand what the source of the problem is, trying to fix it is a complete waste of energy.

If your line of logic works for you, that's great. I don't agree with you, though. Giving everyone choice and freedom is all dandy and fine but... why can't I chop down Elwynn Forest? Ah, right... because we only get certain freedoms granted by Blizzard. So this is not an universal idea that has its basis in logic or whatever, it's a design decision by Blizzard. And you seem to think they're infallible and thus their decision to split the community up into wait... let's count, LFR, Flex, Normalmode 10/25 and Hard 10/25... That's 5, perhaps even 7 subgroups if you consider that while people may be able to do LFR and Flex in addition to their regular raids, some will just do it once per week.

Now you're saying "Ahh, too bad, you have to choose and be content that your friends abandon you."

How is that not idiocy? It hasn't happened, yet. But while people could always just quit the group and go somewhere else, there was a certain threshold they had to overcome that made loyalty to the group more valuable. All Blizzard is achieving these days is lowering the threshold for people to reconsider how much loyalty to a group is worth to them just headrolling their way through content. It's easier and easier to just switch to whatever suits you...

And I'll say this clearly so you understand exactly what I'm saying: Blizzard's design strategy is discouraging the maintenance of currrently existing communities by giving people yet more incentives to reorganise themselves into new community groupings. Again. Until Blizzard has another brilliant idea. And while you seem to say "Hey, that's cool, each to his own, right?" I'm saying "Yeah, that's cool... except, these are not just numbers that get shift around, these are people I've known for 5-8 years... so I'll ask you to cut me some slack when I say this pisses me off gradually. It has been a problem for a couple of years but now I'm saying something, because this is escalating the problem on a level I'm not willing to sit back and watch anymore."

Edit: Oh, and also it's the title of the thread so... what do you expect. :P

[Deleted]

Imagine the choice is between a normal mode guild (that raids flexi every rest first) and a normal mode guild which just wants to raid normals.

Which one would you join and/or stay with, as one of the raiders who doesn't always get a spot in normals?

I'm not saying people will be so cynical as to jump ship on the evening of 5.4. What I see happening is this. Normie guild 1 won't do flexi, they are focused on progression. Normie guild 2 does flexi first, then does normals. After reset, the benched players from normie guild 1 get asked to join the flexi groups raid (cos why not?) either through a friend or via trade chat. After a few weeks of this, the benched raiders are raiding more with the friends/pug than they are with their own guild. It's only natural at that point for them to move on.

What is also likely to happen is that the guild who wanted to stick to just normals will see their raiders eyeing the exits and change strategy themselves to keep the bench. This will then also make them a flexi first, normals second type of guild. Either way, 10 man normals be fucked if this is the situation, especially the more casual end because they simply won't have time to clear both flex and normals even if they wanted to. Normals (it looks to me) are going to be an afterthought - both for the new flexi class and for the HC crowd. It'll be a lot like the current 25 man situation - very few normal mode 25 mans exist.

As I said, I don't have a lot of experience (if any) with this type of guilds. But assuming people are being rotated in and out the whole evening, depending on the boss (i.e setup needed and loot drops - maybe it's really good with a Rogue for a certain setup and then a DK is better for the next boss etc.). Then nobody will have the time to join a Flex pug/semi guild run, cause they know they're likely going to be swapped in for the next boss. What you're talking about, is the case where someone is benched for an entire night and if that's the case, they should change guilds yes (or improve their gameplay).

For Heroic guilds, I'm not so sure. I mean, my own guild is going to push really hard in 5.4. Going 2 groups + Flex the first weeks to optimize our chances at loot. As soon as we only go with the core group in one raid, we'll be doing Normals on our alts. I think a lot of other Heroic guilds will do the same. Flex will be something we do right at the beginning and then again, when we're done progressing and can bring some socials/friends and just have fun. Cause why would we ever do Flex mode in our alt run, when we're capable of doing Normals and the loot is better?

That being said, I think you might be right about Normal mode guilds. Specially the ones that barely manage to clear 12/12 right now. The Normal mode guilds who can actually clear the content and maybe even work on a Heroic or two, I'm not so sure about them.

[Ceece]

Let me put it like this.. I like killing bosses, when I'm not burned out. I loved being able to do 25-mans on a normal raiding schedule, while having 10-man open for off nights, even if we are long passed that and the game has changed. This offers multiple rewards for slot filling, transmog, and/or alternative friendly. Those that raid only LFR, may like the idea of Flex mode as another option, if they're down for getting a little dirty.

[Tekkommo]

Why would anyone do all 4 modes on one character?

I know I certainly won't be and I don't feel forced to either.

Normal/Heroics for main, lfr/flex for alts.

[Konker]

With 6/7/10/12mil subscribers, you can never please everyone ALL the time. That's foolish and would be folly to try. Instead, most wise business models try to offer as much as they can to as many people as possible, in as many different ways as possible to promote repeat purchases/customers.

Did you just say that wise business models try to please everyone instead of trying to please everyone... because that would be foolish? Silly as it sounds, I agree. Foolish as it is to cater to everyone, it is a fantastic business model. The sacrifice comes after a time when while catering to everyone eventually you have a convoluted menagerie that - over time - will eventually alienate nearly everyone who once loved it.

I think the elephant in the room here that nobody seems to notice is that while group activities are being split up to cater to individual needs, more people are playing individually. Not inherently a bad thing, though this is creating what is essentially an ever more divided caste system - groupings based on player type rather than free interaction - encouraging reward based play while penalizing social play.

For example, take 4 friends. Each one is best suited to one each of LFR, Flex, Normal, Heroic. As it is, there are no game mechanics that would encourage them to play together but there are many game mechanics that encourage them to not play together.

That is what I miss about "old" WoW. There were always times when the game would make people stop, put together a group friends and conquer an obstacle. It was far from perfect - too punishing in that way, but now that aspect of WoW is essentially non-existent. When help is very rarely even needed, and when it is needed, help can be automatically assigned in a matter of minutes it becomes way to hard and tedious to ask a friend fly on over and play together when there are so many much, much more efficient ways to get the game to pay out.

Maybe it's just me but I enjoyed not seeing content with my guild far, far more than seeing everything in the game with random, single-serving people.

[Nobleshield]

Imagine the choice is between a normal mode guild (that raids flexi every rest first) and a normal mode guild which just wants to raid normals.

Which one would you join and/or stay with, as one of the raiders who doesn't always get a spot in normals?

I'm not saying people will be so cynical as to jump ship on the evening of 5.4. What I see happening is this. Normie guild 1 won't do flexi, they are focused on progression. Normie guild 2 does flexi first, then does normals. After reset, the benched players from normie guild 1 get asked to join the flexi groups raid (cos why not?) either through a friend or via trade chat. After a few weeks of this, the benched raiders are raiding more with the friends/pug than they are with their own guild. It's only natural at that point for them to move on.

What is also likely to happen is that the guild who wanted to stick to just normals will see their raiders eyeing the exits and change strategy themselves to keep the bench. This will then also make them a flexi first, normals second type of guild. Either way, 10 man normals be fucked if this is the situation, especially the more casual end because they simply won't have time to clear both flex and normals even if they wanted to. Normals (it looks to me) are going to be an afterthought - both for the new flexi class and for the HC crowd. It'll be a lot like the current 25 man situation - very few normal mode 25 mans exist.

This is a pretty good point, I think. I've pretty much never seen a regular guild that rotated people in and out or benched people; the only guilds to do that were of a more hardcore/serious bent and (even if they weren't) acted like the high-end hardcore guilds by doing the old "Who needs loot from this boss? Okay Bob, we're going to bring in Jim for this guy since you don't need anything". That tended to piss off the people who were on standby because they weren't allowed to pug the raid, but would end up locked to a couple of bosses at best; nobody outside of being in a major league guild would agree to something like that because let's face it, the crux of the game is PERSONAL progression, not guild progression. Nobody will give a damn if your guild is 13/13H if YOU aren't because you're a standby raider who gets swapped in for some fights but not all of them, unless you're in a very highly ranked guild where the guild tag alone is enough to give you "street cred".

The guilds I've been in that have tried to have standby/backup raiders, guess what happened? After a couple of weeks of those people not being needed while the "main" team was progressing, they found new guilds that let them be part of the main team and they /gquit, because nobody wants to be kept from doing content on the chance that you might be needed for a handful of bosses that somebody else doesn't need anything from, or kept around because if somebody can't be on then you get brought in instead of having to pug someone from Trade.

It will be VERY interesting to see how Flex affects Normal, because I honestly see it taking a big chunk out of all but the hardcore guilds that use normal as a stepping stone for heroics, because outside of the shitty LFR-style loot system Flex offers the vast majority of guilds the best of both worlds: fun, accessible content that you can run with guildies, but you don't have to exclude or rotate people and piss the ones excluded/benched off and risk having them leave the guild. For most guilds that's HUGE because they don't offer any incentives to get people to sign on as bench/standby; people join raiding guilds to RAID, not be told "Log on tonight for the duration of the raid in case you're needed but oh by the way you aren't allowed to pug this raid at all because we don't want you locked". Nobody is going to stand for that bullshit unless you're in a top guild, but at that level there are people who don't mind joining a top ranked guild as a standby (or even friend/family) just to wear that guild tag and have fame by association. Not so for everything below the best. That and the majority of guilds that I've seen don't even bother to run a standby; we have a core group that is 99% of the time on, and if someone is out then either we pug trade or if we have a casual/friend member on we try to bring them in, it's not like there's a group of raiders that are second-string that we can turn to.

[Deleted]

Thats why you should not have permanent standby/backup raiders. You should rotate who is in the raid and who is standing by.

The 25 man guild I play in cataclysm was hardcore-casual guild, in the terms we raided extremely seriously, but we only expected a 50% attendancy on 3 raids a week from our roster even though we were doing heroic modes. This lead to us having quite a large roster, about 40 players. On some raids we only had 25-27 sign ups, on some we had 33-36 sign ups. This lead to a lot of people having to standby. If you got to be standby on a raid, you were not required to be online

What simply did was we had a pointsystem. If you were standby on a raid, you got a +1. So if Steve had been standby 3 times and Michael 4 times, steve had 3 points and Michael 4 points. Whoever had the lowest amount of points got to be standby. On very rare occassion we could make exceptions for heroic progression raids if we really needed a specific class, but that would even itself out anyway. This ensured a very fair and even spread of who got to be standby. If a player siged up for a raid and did not show up on time, he very strictly got a -2, which meant that basically you would get to be standby 2 times to "catch up" to the others.

This entire system was very easy, everyone could understand it and everyone could see it publically. Nobody complained, and sure as hell noone ragequitted the guild because they got to be standby once every 2 weeks.

A 10 man guild that I was in MoP simply asked people when we were 11. "Who wants to be standby?", usually someone actually wanted to be standby that raid. If nobody wanted to be standby a simple /roll can suffice.

[Nobleshield]

But then you still piss whoever is on standby off, because they don't get to raid that week (at least not until later in the week, depending on when you raid). Which is fine if somebody really doesn't feel like raiding and wants a break, but not so much if nobody wants to and it's down to a roll. That's a good way to hurt feelings and make people annoyed.

[Deleted]

But then you still piss whoever is on standby off, because they don't get to raid that week (at least not until later in the week, depending on when you raid). Which is fine if somebody really doesn't feel like raiding and wants a break, but not so much if nobody wants to and it's down to a roll. That's a good way to hurt feelings and make people annoyed.

This guild was one of the oldest guilds, had been running from beta. Not a single player was pissed off since vanilla to cataclysm. Who was supposed to be standby was designated the day before the raid, so that people knew atleast 1 day in advance "I am standby for the raid", so they would not log in and see "Oh shit, I am standby!". They could prepare for being standby and knew that they could plan something else that night.

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People getting pissed off for being on standby has obviously never played any sport. Guess what, you need substitutes. WoW if anything is pretty harmless in its substitues.

It is a very toxic attitude from people that really got nothing to do in team games. It is one thing if the same guy gets passed up every single raid, but as long as you have a fair system rotating who is in and not it should not piss you off that much. If you get to be standby once every 2 weeks, it is not a big deal. Is it better that you do not get a raid going at all because you are only 9 people? You need at the very least 11 player roster to maintain a 10 man team, if your raid teams have a lot of people not showing up you might even need 12.

[Deleted]

This guild was one of the oldest guilds, had been running from beta. Not a single player was pissed off since vanilla to cataclysm. Who was supposed to be standby was designated the day before the raid, so that people knew atleast 1 day in advance "I am standby for the raid", so they would not log in and see "Oh shit, I am standby!". They could prepare for being standby and knew that they could plan something else that night.

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People getting pissed off for being on standby has obviously never played any sport. Guess what, you need substitutes. WoW if anything is pretty harmless in its substitues.

It is a very toxic attitude from people that really got nothing to do in team games. It is one thing if the same guy gets passed up every single raid, but as long as you have a fair system rotating who is in and not it should not piss you off that much. If you get to be standby once every 2 weeks, it is not a big deal. Is it better that you do not get a raid going at all because you are only 9 people? You need at the very least 11 player roster to maintain a 10 man team, if your raid teams have a lot of people not showing up you might even need 12.

It isn't a question of being pissed off really.

It's simply a question of incentives. 11th/12th/13th raider in your guild can just go raid with someone else with no way of stopping them. So he will. Give it a few weeks and he'll be off to whoever has been inviting him most regularly.

yes it's not very good team play, but neither is not taking everyone to a flexi raid first. Aka you scratch my back i'll scratch yours, or you treat me like i'm replacable, i'll treat you like you are replacable.

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But then you still piss whoever is on standby off, because they don't get to raid that week (at least not until later in the week, depending on when you raid). Which is fine if somebody really doesn't feel like raiding and wants a break, but not so much if nobody wants to and it's down to a roll. That's a good way to hurt feelings and make people annoyed.

First month of SoO? The total number of raiders online who want don't want to go will be very low, I think.

[Deleted]

It isn't a question of being pissed off really.

It's simply a question of incentives. 11th/12th/13th raider in your guild can just go raid with someone else with no way of stopping them. So he will. Give it a few weeks and he'll be off to whoever has been inviting him most regularly.

yes it's not very good team play, but neither is not taking everyone to a flexi raid first. Aka you scratch my back i'll scratch yours, or you treat me like i'm replacable, i'll treat you like you are replacable.

That is kinda the point, you should not have someone that is the 11th or 12th raiders. You should be a team. You dont let the same guy standby over and over again. That is just clueless management.

[Deleted]

That is kinda the point, you should not have someone that is the 11th or 12th raiders. You should be a team. You dont let the same guy standby over and over again. That is just clueless management.

You ain't a team if you won't do a mode that will take the whole team.

See the point?

[valliant13]

Before I rant --- I love the idea of flex - I think it should be implemented for all difficulty levels.

I hate having multiple difficulty levels. Does anybody seriously enjoy killing the same damn boss 100+ times per tier?

Solution: One difficulty (heroic) with flex. Every month, any bosses that have been killed by at least 100 different guilds take a 10% nerf. Top end guilds can still push for rankings without worry, and the casuals can still see all content before next tier, and EVERYBODY gets excited when they kill a boss (if anybody even remembers that feeling)....

And who cares about perfectly balancing flex --- let the top end guilds play around with the numbers & compositions themselves.

Nobody is forcing all four on you. With the introduction of flex I will not be doing LFR anymore aside from maybe if I'm in a pinch for valor. Once I get steady progress in normal mode, I will probably completely ignore flex as heroics would be right around the corner.

[Nobleshield]

That is kinda the point, you should not have someone that is the 11th or 12th raiders. You should be a team. You dont let the same guy standby over and over again. That is just clueless management.

Agreed, but this is a fine line to cross because if the whole concept of a bench (besides having no place IMO in a game, but that's not the point) indicates that someone is "second rate", and therefore not your primary choice (to compare look at American Football - your 2nd/3rd string quarterbacks are usually not as good as your main guy, so you only bring them in when your main guy is hurt or it's the end of the season and you don't want to risk him getting hurt). So if you ask a longterm guy to sit out to bring in a standby, you're going to hurt some feelings there too except perhaps if they've gotten every last bit of gear that they need and don't mind having the night off. It seems like a lose-lose situation for the run of the mill guilds because NOBODY wants to give up the chance at loot to let someone else step in. Is it selfish? Sure it is, but that's how things really go.

The only real players you have benched in my experience are: Casual raiders who can't meet all the raid times, but try to keep geared as close as possible via pugs/LFR/soon-to-be Flex, and "Friends/Family" members who don't really care to raid, but are decent enough with their class that they can fill a slot if needed so you don't have to take a chance with a Trade pug. Anything else is asking for drama as if you rotate people, the people being rotated out tend to feel like you're saying they aren't good enough, or else they end up being branded as "loot whores" who ONLY want to come in for bosses that have loot they can use (saw this in a past guild - a hunter would volunteer to be on standby for any boss where he didn't need a drop, and was /gkicked for it because he only wanted to come in on bosses where he needed a drop and got angry if we benched him for those fights and brought him for fights he didn't need loot for), and of course if you keep the same people benched they'll just quit and go elsewhere where they don't have to be benched.

[Deleted]

You ain't a team if you won't do a mode that will take the whole team.

See the point?

So because we play handball with a team of 13 players (actually about 15-17 players in the team but only bring 13 to games) when we only use 7 on the field at the time, we are not a team?

If you raid something that you have the exact amount of players that you need (e.g. 10), if one guy is missing, you cant raid. That is why you have that 11th raider, to cover up for people not being able to show. Maybe you have to be on standby once every 2-3 weeks, but that is better than missing 1 raid each week because you are not 10 players. I would much rather be standby one day then to sit with 9 players not being able to raid.

[Deleted]

So because we play handball with a team of 13 players (actually about 15-17 players in the team but only bring 13 to games) when we only use 7 on the field at the time, we are not a team?

not if the handball association changes the rules so you can take everyone, but you choose to play it the old way.

If you raid something that you have the exact amount of players that you need (e.g. 10), if one guy is missing, you cant raid. That is why you have that 11th raider, to cover up for people not being able to show. Maybe you have to be on standby once every 2-3 weeks, but that is better than missing 1 raid each week because you are not 10 players. I would much rather be standby one day then to sit with 9 players not being able to raid.

And when that 11th raider is there and there is an 11 man raid you can do, if you choose not to and leave him out, your "it's a team" talk is going to sound pretty fucking hollow.

[Jessicka]

10N -> 10H -> 25N -> 25H: Why?

So, basically it's just reverting to the WotLK model that was so popular, but with better variety of format.

[Deleted]

This is a pretty good point, I think. I've pretty much never seen a regular guild that rotated people in and out or benched people; the only guilds to do that were of a more hardcore/serious bent and (even if they weren't) acted like the high-end hardcore guilds by doing the old "Who needs loot from this boss? Okay Bob, we're going to bring in Jim for this guy since you don't need anything". That tended to piss off the people who were on standby because they weren't allowed to pug the raid, but would end up locked to a couple of bosses at best; nobody outside of being in a major league guild would agree to something like that because let's face it, the crux of the game is PERSONAL progression, not guild progression. Nobody will give a damn if your guild is 13/13H if YOU aren't because you're a standby raider who gets swapped in for some fights but not all of them, unless you're in a very highly ranked guild where the guild tag alone is enough to give you "street cred".

The guilds I've been in that have tried to have standby/backup raiders, guess what happened? After a couple of weeks of those people not being needed while the "main" team was progressing, they found new guilds that let them be part of the main team and they /gquit, because nobody wants to be kept from doing content on the chance that you might be needed for a handful of bosses that somebody else doesn't need anything from, or kept around because if somebody can't be on then you get brought in instead of having to pug someone from Trade.

It will be VERY interesting to see how Flex affects Normal, because I honestly see it taking a big chunk out of all but the hardcore guilds that use normal as a stepping stone for heroics, because outside of the shitty LFR-style loot system Flex offers the vast majority of guilds the best of both worlds: fun, accessible content that you can run with guildies, but you don't have to exclude or rotate people and piss the ones excluded/benched off and risk having them leave the guild. For most guilds that's HUGE because they don't offer any incentives to get people to sign on as bench/standby; people join raiding guilds to RAID, not be told "Log on tonight for the duration of the raid in case you're needed but oh by the way you aren't allowed to pug this raid at all because we don't want you locked". Nobody is going to stand for that bullshit unless you're in a top guild, but at that level there are people who don't mind joining a top ranked guild as a standby (or even friend/family) just to wear that guild tag and have fame by association. Not so for everything below the best. That and the majority of guilds that I've seen don't even bother to run a standby; we have a core group that is 99% of the time on, and if someone is out then either we pug trade or if we have a casual/friend member on we try to bring them in, it's not like there's a group of raiders that are second-string that we can turn to.

I don't know where you got your information from, but my guild has always done this. Been clearing 13/13 for months now and everybody got their achievements/kills, while nobody has ever had to sit out for majority of the raid or being locked to just a few bosses - unless they chose to - as is the case now, where nobody actually need anything. That's how most Heroic raiding guilds manage, do you think we'd keep our raiders, if we did what you seem to think we do?

We wouldn't and that's why we call it rotate and not benching. If Normal mode guild leaders can't figure this out, they're not suited to be guild leaders in the first place and the odds are that their guild is casual and probably rather bad.

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not if the handball association changes the rules so you can take everyone, but you choose to play it the old way.


And when that 11th raider is there and there is an 11 man raid you can do, if you choose not to and leave him out, your "it's a team" talk is going to sound pretty fucking hollow.

The difference here is, that the best league or the best raid mode doesn't offer the option of bringing 11 players. Ask if those handball players would like to play in the third best league or having to be rotated once in a while. Cause that's the case here. If Flex was applied to both Normal and Heroic as well, then your argument would be valid, but it isn't - yet at least.

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Agreed, but this is a fine line to cross because if the whole concept of a bench (besides having no place IMO in a game, but that's not the point) indicates that someone is "second rate", and therefore not your primary choice (to compare look at American Football - your 2nd/3rd string quarterbacks are usually not as good as your main guy, so you only bring them in when your main guy is hurt or it's the end of the season and you don't want to risk him getting hurt). So if you ask a longterm guy to sit out to bring in a standby, you're going to hurt some feelings there too except perhaps if they've gotten every last bit of gear that they need and don't mind having the night off. It seems like a lose-lose situation for the run of the mill guilds because NOBODY wants to give up the chance at loot to let someone else step in. Is it selfish? Sure it is, but that's how things really go.

The only real players you have benched in my experience are: Casual raiders who can't meet all the raid times, but try to keep geared as close as possible via pugs/LFR/soon-to-be Flex, and "Friends/Family" members who don't really care to raid, but are decent enough with their class that they can fill a slot if needed so you don't have to take a chance with a Trade pug. Anything else is asking for drama as if you rotate people, the people being rotated out tend to feel like you're saying they aren't good enough, or else they end up being branded as "loot whores" who ONLY want to come in for bosses that have loot they can use (saw this in a past guild - a hunter would volunteer to be on standby for any boss where he didn't need a drop, and was /gkicked for it because he only wanted to come in on bosses where he needed a drop and got angry if we benched him for those fights and brought him for fights he didn't need loot for), and of course if you keep the same people benched they'll just quit and go elsewhere where they don't have to be benched.

Why do you think, that being benched for a fight or rotated out for a fight makes a person "second rank" per definition? Nobody said anything about that. That's where loot and setup comes to play. I've yet to have a raid night where NOBODY offered to step out, cause everyone knows that with 13 raiders in the roster, 3 people have to sit out on every fight. And as long it's not the same 3 people every time, that's totally acceptable. Over the course of a month, people end up having killed the same amount of bosses and we don't have to cancel raids.

[Raelbo]

Do I really need to explain again with mathemagic why this is not a good definition at all? In the majority of cases, the majority of people at any given activity is "bad".

Is it really not that obvious that I am talking about people who play WoW relative to other people WoW? Yes, I accept that 99.5% of the world's population are terrible WoW players by virtue of never having touched the game. They are not the "significant majority" I was referring to.

If a class takes a test at school and the average for the class ends up being 3/20, having a 5/20 doesn't suddenly make you good. You still obtained a shit grade regardless of your positioning compared to your classmates.

Terms like bad and good are subjective and have meaning only when placed in context. Furthermore, unless some discretion is used when labelling something as bad, you run the risk of it being useless. The term "bad" is not simply a boolean (true/false) function. It can, and should, be used to denote scale.

Therefore if A is better than B, B is not necessarily bad, unless A is significantly better than B. This concept is useful because it is often possible that not only is A better than B, but better than C, D, E, F .... Z as well, and that only F and K actually classify as "bad".


The example of the class test you gave is bad. Not because there are better examples that you could have used, but because it has serious deficiencies, makes a number of assumptions and creates no context whatsoever. You cannot claim that 5/20 is either good or bad unless you define the parameters of the test. If your hypothetical test was designed for 16 year olds, but the person who scored 5/20 was only 7 years old, one could argue that the result was is fact good. If however this test was a competency test to see if the people writing it were fit to drive a motor vehicle, it doesn't matter what age the respondants were, 5/20 is bad.

Welp, when it comes to LoL or Dota2 or WoW, I can also safely say most people are clueless. Which is fine. I'm clueless myself at a lot of games, and I don't see anything wrong with it.

I can confidently say that most people who play WoW, especially those who have played for a significant amount of time, are not clueless about WoW. By definition, the mere fact that someone is playing WoW means he or she has some clue about the game. The real problem you have here is a poor use of the word clueless.

The word "bad" suffers the same ill treatment. There are very few people who are brilliant at WoW, but there is an entire continuum of gradation between bad and brilliant.

The fact of the matter is that when people spend enough time and effort actively working at something, provided they don't have some sort of physical or mental deficiency, they will become good at it. Yes I regularly see examples of people playing badly. But most of the time I see people playing well. Very rarely I see someone playing exceptionally and it's something to be admired.

It's certainly not a case of assuming anything below the 99th percentile is bad (although I do apply this to myself personally, but I'm aware I'm a masochist when it comes to my personal expectations), but on the other hand, you certainly don't have to get as low as the 50th percentile to see performance decrease substantially.

"Bad" is a subjective term. We're talking about WoW here and the people who play the game. We're not talking about string theory (or any other strawman you wish to bring in to the discussion).

In the very basest of definitions you can divide the WoW population into three groups: Above average; Average (which I will define as the median) and Below Average.

The term bad, as defined in the English language would be a subgroup of the Below Average group. The exact boundary that separates a bad player from a below average player is open to debate given the subjective nature of the term "bad", but I would argue that reasonable people would likely exclude a significant number of below average people from being classified as bad.

What I actually see around these forums is a bunch of elitist people with bad social (and often cognitive) skills labelling the vast majority of players as "bad" simply to stroke their own egos. Relative to you, I am probably pretty "bad" at the game. Just like, relative to Novak Djokovic, I am bad at tennis. Relative to my 6 year old daughter though, I am a god at both WoW and tennis. However I would note that neither definition is particularly useful when it comes to defining my actual skill level in either activity because you could define most of the planet in the same bracket.

For the term "bad" to have any useful meaning in the context of WoW, it must be tempered by making a relative comparison against the active playerbase of the game (while taking into account the relative skill gap between the average WoW player and the average non-player), and therefore logic dictates that it should be used to describe only those people really performing at the bottom end of the scale - somewhere around the 20(+/-15)th percentile maybe.

So while you, as someone doing 250K dps on a particular encounter might feel justified in calling anyone doing less than 200K on the boss "bad" you are actually equating someone doing 199K dps with someone else doing 19K dps, which is lazy, unhelpful and, quite frankly, idiotic. It would make a million times more sense to recognise mr 199K dps as being "good", while reserving the term "bad" for those scoring below, say 50K. (Mr 19K would in this case classify as hopeless).

Disagree with me if you want. But when you call me "bad" at WoW, all I hear is you saying "Look at me. I am awesome. I have poor self esteem issues and zero EQ, so I need you to recognise how good I am at WoW for me to have some sense of self worth".