Accessibility and Apathy

[Felarion]

Another big video from Preach.

[Ruffles]

There's already a thread with the same video: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...lutely-nothing

[Pull My Finger]

I've seen the other thread, but haven't even watched the video, so I didn't even realize it was that guy again. Well in that case, in the immortal words of Jay Wilson: FTL!

[Deja Thoris]

Yeah, so?

It's a discussion forum. Discuss it.

I personally stopped listening to Mr. nostalgia harping on about the glory days, I do know a lot of people just swallow his gospel wholesale though.

[Valech]

Couldn´t have put it better.

[Akraen]

He's pretty much right. My guild, Natural Order is a retirement home for Death and Taxes, a couple old vodka people, and a bunch of other misc. hardcore vanilla and TBC raiders. We're the ones that still do 25m raiding and persist through change after change.

New players do not ever seem to make it to even my 4/13h guild. If one ever applies, it's usually with an app of one-word answers, incomplete sentences, and no effort.

When I run LFRs, usually for legendary quest drops, I try to whisper other mages to give them friendly tips. Usually they reply that I should shut up, I'm an elitist, blah blah blah. They see my ilvl and damage and write me off as some elite bad guy that is only flexing an epeen.

In Dragon Soul LFR last expac, I was kicked from LFR multiple times for "not needing anything" - despite the fact that I was going just for fun and to test out different specs and talents. When I went to those LFRs, if I won items I would trade them to low performers that I could tell were trying.

You're just not allowed to be a helpful good guy in this environment because you're written off before you can even attempt to help.

[Deleted]

When I run LFRs, usually for legendary quest drops, I try to whisper other mages to give them friendly tips.

Why would you do that? Unless you're wiping and can help the group, I really don't see a reason for this. I'm all for giving advise, anyone can ask me and I'll help, but you whispering people out of nowhere really comes over like "hey, you suck, you should do it like this!" despite how friendly you may word it.

[Enosh]

When I went to those LFRs, if I won items I would trade them to low performers that I could tell were trying.

yeah what a surprise you were kicked

You're just not allowed to be a helpful good guy in this environment because you're written off before you can even attempt to help.

when you are needing on items you don't need just so you can play the self proclaimed master looter YOU ARE THE BAD GUY

[Akraen]

And you're part of the problem.

What is the point of a community if we don't help better each other? Why do we post here if sharing ideas is not wanted?

Why are there class forums? Why are there guides? I am a contributor to a lot of mage theorycraft. But no, I guess you're part of the new era. People who don't want to be any better. But if you don't want to be any better, why get gear? All the gear in the world will be meaningless if you use all the wrong abilities in the wrong order.

[Squirl]

Why would you do that? Unless you're wiping and can help the group, I really don't see a reason for this. I'm all for giving advise, anyone can ask me and I'll help, but you whispering people out of nowhere really comes over like "hey, you suck, you should do it like this!" despite how friendly you may word it.

Off topic, but this. I have rogues whispering me all the time for tips. I'm happy to help when they initiate, but just coming out of nowhere with advice, no matter how helpful/accurate/polite, comes off douchey.

Also, being the loot nanny in DS LFR was a huge dick move. I ran it all the time too across 5 characters even if I didn't need anything just because I like raiding and LFR was new and exciting. I really don't think you were kicked because your gear. You were kicked because you felt you could distribute loot more fairly than RNG and felt the need to correct the way people play in LFR without them asking for help. I've never been kicked from LFR, and my characters are almost always "not needing anything".

[Akraen]

yeah what a surprise you were kicked

when you are needing on items you don't need just so you can play the self proclaimed master looter YOU ARE THE BAD GUY

Two sides to every coin buddy. Were you not there during the time of the ninja needers? People in high-ilvl gear would need on things just to DE them, or to prevent others from winning. I'd win them and either have people roll off or give it to someone who clearly needed it. Still wrong? Yeah, but it was a lot better than it becoming DE mats.

---------- Post added 2013-06-05 at 02:36 PM ----------

Off topic, but this. I have rogues whispering me all the time for tips. I'm happy to help when they initiate, but just coming out of nowhere with advice, no matter how helpful/accurate/polite, comes off douchey.

I love when people initiate. But they so rarely do. I think the system should change to stop it being okay to simply not care.

[Lushious]

And you're part of the problem.

What is the point of a community if we don't help better each other? Why do we post here if sharing ideas is not wanted?

Why are there class forums? Why are there guides? I am a contributor to a lot of mage theorycraft. But no, I guess you're part of the new era. People who don't want to be any better. But if you don't want to be any better, why get gear? All the gear in the world will be meaningless if you use all the wrong abilities in the wrong order.

People come to the forums ASKING for help, nobody is interested in someone randomely whispering you to do that or this.

[Manhands]

I'll summarize the video's theme: It's possible to be the worst player imaginable and still see the content, and this shows that the game is flawed.

But without any proposed solutions, this video doesn't say anything these forums haven't already discussed in depth: Should dungeons be harder? Should LFR be harder? Is it okay that good players can carry an LFR and that very few mechanics can kill you? Or are normals too hard, and the "gap" between them needs to be smaller in some way? Or should LFR be 10-man, so people can't get lost in the crowd? Or an auto-kick mechanism for people based on performance?

What is it you want solved, MikePreachWow, and how would you solve it? That would have been a useful video.

On a side note, MikePreachWow spent more time in this video preemptively arguing against people who will defend LFR/current gearing systems then he did defining the real problem or even *hinting* at a solution. I find that...annoying.

[Venant]

One of the first points that is made is about how these guilds spam invite anyone that is not in a guild. GMs should crack down on this process, since for the most part it seems that this is an automated process where a scan is done of all players and then a ginvite and automated message is sent out. This type of profiteering off of tricking new players into joining a guild is just one of the things that has become a blight upon the community, especially on highly populated servers.

There should be more community building, the game would improve immensely if the players took a more active roll in this. The guild system itself is built upon predatory tendencies, where guilds usually recruit or 'poach' from other guilds, and you are probably not going to get into a good guild without any experience. Everybody is outsourcing the training and 'building' of new players to the next guy. Who knows, perhaps there should be some sort of rating system for pve, or some other incentive that changes the dynamics of the game to be more competitive.

If the author of the video had taken the pvp path, I imagine he would have gotten more feedback from the gameplay. In pvp you have other players actively trying to kill you, and being killed is generally not a pleasant experience, so unless you just afk in a corner during BGs you are encouraged to do what you can for self preservation.

[fangless]

I'll summarize the video's theme: It's possible to be the worst player imaginable and still see the content, and this shows that the game is flawed.

But without any proposed solutions, this video doesn't say anything these forums haven't already discussed in depth: Should dungeons be harder? Should LFR be harder? Is it okay that good players can carry an LFR and that very few mechanics can kill you? Or are normals too hard, and the "gap" between them needs to be smaller in some way? Or should LFR be 10-man, so people can't get lost in the crowd? Or an auto-kick mechanism for people based on performance?

What is it you want solved, MikePreachWow, and how would you solve it? That would have been a useful video.

On a side note, MikePreachWow spent more time in this video preemptively arguing against people who will defend LFR/current gearing systems then he did defining the real problem or even *hinting* at a solution. I find that...annoying.

Well, if he had proposed any changes to LFR, people would instantly forget anything he said.

His point is still legit. New players don't know any better. They walk into LFR, not knowing how to perform, and they get the carrot on the stick. If you were to describe to them what traditional raiding is, they would just look at you and ask 'why'.

The real problem is talked about in the entire video, actually :P

[pld]

Two sides to every coin buddy. Were you not there during the time of the ninja needers? People in high-ilvl gear would need on things just to DE them, or to prevent others from winning. I'd win them and either have people roll off or give it to someone who clearly needed it. Still wrong? Yeah, but it was a lot better than it becoming DE mats.

---------- Post added 2013-06-05 at 02:36 PM ----------



I love when people initiate. But they so rarely do. I think the system should change to stop it being okay to simply not care.

I don't know how you are approaching the other mages, and I don't want to assume, but it's really important how you are speaking to the other players. The few times I've approached someone to help, I tried to be as non-hostile as possible understanding that their initial reaction might be to get defensive. I find that usually people are pretty receptive as long as they feel you know what you are talking about and you're polite about it.

[Deleted]

Agree with this vid wholeheartedly but there is no solution. Content has become more accessible for financial reasons - I wouldn't want to (for example) direct a movie that only a small amount of people get to see.

The problem is that, by making content more accessible you also have to drop the difficulty level - it's a double edged sword. If you want random pugs like LFR to be able to see the encounters then they need to be piss easy. If you want people who are new to the game (and used to COD or whatever) to get to max level and see the content then the levelling process needs to be quick and the dungeons need to be easy.

Is this the "right" way for Blizzard to go about it? God knows. I could spout on for hours about Xrealm content, lack of repercussions and the drop in overall difficulty level for everything bar normal and heroic raids but that wouldn't get me anywhere... LFR (and other quick, easy xrealm content) has been a blessing for a lot of people who want to play but just can't commit the time to scheduled raiding - unfortunately because it exists a lot of people make that choice to concentrate exclusively on LFR and this takes potential raiders out of the "normal" raiding pool, killing the low-midrange raid scene as it goes.

There's no fix. The only way I could see would be making 5man, heroic dungeons semi-difficult again because they're a necessary gear step on the road to raiding. Limiting LFR to the previous tier's content, keeping it at previous tier's normal ilvl and removing the "raid finder" tag from gear would mean LFR raiders can still get hold of competitive loot while being a tier behind (tiers are only a few months apart now anyway), hopefully encouraging more people to take up normal raiding and improve their skills.

Anyway, rant over.

[Sparkidy]

That was a strange video in that it shocked me at first, but I couldn't honestly say I'm surprised.

One thing that came across is that I think he got wrong was when he was talking about how there were a lot of people who barely beat him on the meters when he did nothing but auto-attack or whatever. He seemed to think these were new players who had no idea, or maybe he was just being optimistic, but pennies to pounds those people were doing the exactly same thing as him - just autoattacking and letting the 10-15 people actually trying carry them to the win with minimal effort while they alt-tab out and do something else.

Anecdotal evidence incoming - I can't remember the last LFR I did where there weren't at least 5 dps doing such low numbers that they couldn't possibly be trying even slightly. I've even looked at the damage breakdowns on Skada and you can see they're only using 3 abilities. I don't get mad about it, the boss still goes down, but I do get a bit sad that this is what we've come to.

I think the problem is less that there's no encouragement/direction for bad players to get better outside of other players trying to help them (but that's still an issue). The bigger problem in my eyes is that perfectly capable but lazy players can see the same net results in terms of loot by putting in 10% of the effort of others.

[Deleted]

And you're part of the problem.

What is the point of a community if we don't help better each other? Why do we post here if sharing ideas is not wanted?

Why are there class forums? Why are there guides? I am a contributor to a lot of mage theorycraft. But no, I guess you're part of the new era. People who don't want to be any better. But if you don't want to be any better, why get gear? All the gear in the world will be meaningless if you use all the wrong abilities in the wrong order.

Part of what problem? Your illusion that everyone should play this game the way YOU want/do? Yeah that's a problem. That'll never happen, sorry to burst your bubble. True story.

Do you honestly not see what is wrong with you whispering randoms? Really? You pretty much tell em they suck, whatever way you decide to tell em. Either they don't care that they suck, and they just mash random buttons to their likings, or they just don't want to be told. Simple as that. People that want to improve will have made an attempt already, whether it's asking someone themselves in-game, or looking up a guide or whatever. They're not waiting in-game for you to share your wisdom with them. Could've figured that out yourself by now by all the negative responses you gotten, no?
Has absolutely nothing to do with community or lack thereof (or bad state of it or whatever). You made some theorycrafting, gz. I'm sure some people appreciated it and learned from it. You want to know who though? The people that WANTED. Not the people you feel the need to enforce it upon. I've spent hours talking to strangers, took em to training dummies etc. Only because they asked though, not because I saw em do something wrong in lfr. Happy to help no matter how bad someone may be. For some reason you really think that everyone's goal in this game is to be amazing.

[Sparkidy]

I don't think that anyone thinks that everyone's goal in this game is to be amazing. But it's a pretty reasonable expectation that people would be playing at what I suppose could be considered the 3rd highest level of content (which is a steep drop, but that's another topic) at a decent level. The thing is, if everyone in LFR played at the level Preach did in that video, or some of those other players barely beating him (whether they're just new/bad/lazy), you would get absolutely nowhere.

The issue raised is that the game no longer requires any semblance of skill or effort to succeed at a relatively high level, because someone else will be forced to carry you there. You can level from 1-90 in a state of ignorant bliss using nothing but auto-attack or your filler spell if you're a caster, because nothing in that process requires you to do any more. It'll just take you a bit longer. You can then do the same in 5-mans, and LFR, because there'll always be those players who know better to carry you through.

The only solution I can think of is if they made LFR entry not based on ilvl, but on some kind of single player scenario skill test. You wouldn't even have to set the bar that high. That would encourage the less skilled players to improve so they could see the content, but would still only solve a smaller problem as I see it. Maybe I'm a relic, but I genuinely believe people are better players than the average LFR would suggest, they're just too lazy to try because they don't have to. You keep the difficulty the way it is now, and you allow this to happen. You make the difficulty harder, and you alienate the genuiely underskilled players. Either way, someone loses.