Dismantling ignorance, a thread of enlightenment.

[Nalnik]

Boy, oh, boy.

Thank you for providing a demonstration of this inept mentality in the very thread meant to debunk it, allow me to help you.

There is a real problem with the addon. I agree that the users misusing it is not a reason to fault the addon. Causing Lag and Disconnects is.

Incorrect, this is discrimination which I outlined in the cause and effect part of the original post. Had gearscore never been invented, these people would be asking you to be wearing full t10 heroic or whatever tier was available at the time.

We are agreed. When people set an insane minimum, it is their fault for setting it, regardless of what they use to determine the minimum. The addon is blameless in how people use or misuse it.

Assumed lag associated with the processes preformed by an addon have nothing to do with this thread nor this mentality. I suggest if lag is a problem for you a computer or internet service upgrade be in your future plans.

I always love this argument. My internet connection is fine. My computer is fine. Spend some time, and watch the traffic your addons use. There is a hidden "chat" channel that addons use to communicate with each other. Sit and watch it, and you will see the problem.

This is a shortcoming of the methodology of the addon, in this same way could you trick flame leviathan into providing more health and damage to your vehicle, this again has no bearing on the discussion at hand.

It's a problem when you are essentially penalized by the addon for using a better piece of gear or rewarded for switching to a worse piece of gear.

You assume that a widely used addon is causing server instability and increasing latency between parties, if this were true blizzard would address the issue.

I never said server instability.What you quoted says that issues created by the users are the fault of the user and issues created by the addon itself are the fault of the addon (and it's author).

To say that there is a "perceived problem" as if it doesn't actually exist is false. There is a real problem with it.

[Doctadrew]

Barely 20 posts and Godwin's law already applies.

Godwin was much like Hitler!

[NotValidAnymore]

Basically, GearScore can be both good and bad.

Good by letting you quickly see people's maximum potential from their gear.

Bad by letting bad players with good gear get into raids, while good players with bad gear will not be able to join. Basically, this means that a bad player gets into places he shouldn't be able to, while the good player doesn't get to go where he deserves. Then again, this can be counter-argumented by the fact that the good player didn't get good enough gear in the first place.

People have different opinions, and thus arguments will always happen. Just try to make the best of it, because that's what humans should do.

So yeah, I agree with the OP. Sorry if I basically repeated what you said. Just wanted to say something useful.

[Trollsmasher]

As have been stated so many times GS is not the problem, its the people using it, even if the addon was disabled people would find a way to do a quick measure, even if you say "but you should make an inspect and watch the gemming...." the people who usually use the addon wont care that much about it. If they dont care know about it what makes people think they will care without the addon.

If you know how to gem, that there are better trinkets, idols, weapons with an ilvl lower than higher ones, then fine, try to make your own pugs, if you are not the type of person to lead a pug, then try to find someone who knows and want to do it and convince him to do it.

This whole GS drama always reminds me an American Dad episode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J89W7zEQzwM (sorry couldn't find a better video, or if you speak dutch (i think, if it isn't sorry :P) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_X7n...eature=related

also this

[fenixblade]

It doesn't matter how much you debate it.
Gearscore is and always will be fail in my eyes. I don't invite, nor do I want to be invited by people who use gearscore.
Why? I don't want numbers to limit what I can and cannot do.

If I didn't have gear score, I would still see your gear through Armory or in-game. Replace the word "gear score" with pre-inspection, because gearscore is a simplified version of an inspect that is used before a real inspection takes place...

gearscore does NOT equal inspect
but it is a pre-inspect, and if you fail that pre-inspect... good bye.

[Ithnaar]

To hate gearscore is to blame the calculator for showing a solution to a mathematical equation that results in you not being able to afford something you want.

I would have to disagree with this somewhat, in that you have not taken 'Mud-Flation' into account.

That phenomenon being that regardless of what Gearscore (or gear) might be the absolutely minimum necessary for a given bit of content, a raid leader will almost always seek out (or, more frequently demand) the person with the very best possible gear (or an arbitrarily high GearScore) so as to make that content as trivial to complete as possible.

This causes a situation in which your "credit score" is certainly good enough to afford a certain item, yet the bank decides to give the loan to someone with a better credit score. Seeing as the old saw that "you need money to make money" is more or less applicable to gearscore...

Under this scenario, with rapidly expanding expectations, the situation quickly becomes one in which in order to join the club, you have to already be a member of the club: I.E. To break the 5600 barrier, you pretty much have to spend time in ICC. However, good luck getting a group in ICC with a Gearscore lower than that...

[Shiira]

Using fancy words makes your nonsene not true.

You could have saved yourself all the trouble writing this subjective view if you would have started thinking after your 2nd paragraph:
GearScore represents the maximum potential for a player to perform. The higher your GearScore the higher your potential to heal/dps/tank.

Example:
I put on full 245 PvP gear as healer/dps/tank and go into a high level raid.
Another guy, same class, same role, same spec puts on full 245 PvE gear and does the same.
Both have the same gearscore, both should have the same potential according to your own words, as quoted.

Now tell me who will perform better ten times out of ten tries?

Think harder about the post that you responded to because you completely missed the point.

I would have to disagree with this somewhat, in that you have not taken 'Mud-Flation' into account.

That phenomenon being that regardless of what Gearscore (or gear) might be the absolutely minimum necessary for a given bit of content, a raid leader will almost always seek out (or, more frequently demand) the person with the very best possible gear (or an arbitrarily high GearScore) so as to make that content as trivial to complete as possible.

This causes a situation in which your "credit score" is certainly good enough to afford a certain item, yet the bank decides to give the loan to someone with a better credit score. Seeing as the old saw that "you need money to make money" is more or less applicable to gearscore...

Under this scenario, with rapidly expanding expectations, the situation quickly becomes one in which in order to join the club, you have to already be a member of the club: I.E. To break the 5600 barrier, you pretty much have to spend time in ICC. However, good luck getting a group in ICC with a Gearscore lower than that...

That isn't what mudflation is at all.

And people have been denied access to groups based on their gear for years before gearscore even existed anyway, gearscore is just another tool that enables them to do so rather than the cause of it.

[Aunor]

Ye i woud agree that problem is with the people using it, other problem is that it makes people making raids and using it stupider, instead of looking at items, enchants, gems, and achievments they look at just number witch represent someones gear score, so while for some it might be good tool witch determens some gear score while making raids, the tool itself is being abused up to a point where its usefullnes in raid making comes in second plan from ignorance of the people and epeen's, so when somthaing is not being used for it purpose any more, but being abused and became negative it shoud be removed since it does more harm than good.

[Jamber]

I bet
atleast 5 ppl got get baned posting here
Atlest 20% of the poster will be trolls
You will get flamed like shit
Non will give me a cockie for writeing this so i shall write no more

I was gonna give you a double chocolate chip cookie, but now you get a stale old oatmeal one.

OT: I have an alt, on whom I've spent nearly 4k gold in crafting gear just to get my gearscore higher, since you can only do certain heroics so often, (Falric will not drop his boots, and 17 kills already!). I've pushed past 5k gearscore, a feat for one limited to only random heroics and the occational VoA(no T10 drops). While looking at my gear, I think it's safe to say I'm about 40% 245 and 60% 232...why do I need a 5.5k gearscore to get into ICC and ToGC, when the "prerequisite" gear at the time they were released, in 10 man modes, were nearly full 232 gear.

Gearscore is not to blame, gearscore is a gun. It's is a tool people can use, and just like a gun, it can be used unfairly by those wielding it. It defends you from those with a smaller gun, who's gun would prove useless in the upcoming encounter. Unfortunately, many pug raid leaders may push off the average Joe's shortcomings (or their own) on players with a perceived small gun for said encounter, when said gun was the original gun used when the encounter was new.

In short, OP is logical, and others should think with logic. If only we could force everyone to use logic, then we wouldn't be having this discussion (thoughts of South Park now come to mind...whoops)

[Deleted]

Hmm. You make some good points, but overall I think your effort is wasted.

Incorrect, this is discrimination which I outlined in the cause and effect part of the original post. Had gearscore never been invented, these people would be asking you to be wearing full t10 heroic or whatever tier was available at the time.

Yes and no. It is a kind of discrimination, but one that can be partially justified. If you have no idea how well someone will perform, you have to make an educated guess based on factors such as their guild and/or gear. Gearscore makes a comparison based on gear very easy, which is why it is used. I very highly doubt any raid leader would expect full T10 for a pug.

Assumed lag associated with the processes preformed by an addon have nothing to do with this thread nor this mentality. I suggest if lag is a problem for you a computer or internet service upgrade be in your future plans.

Just... no. He has said that a traffic meter has registered the "gearscore" addon as sending a lot more information. More information means longer queu time on other parts of information neede to play the game, increasing lag time. This is an undisputable fact.

This is a shortcoming of the methodology of the addon, in this same way could you trick flame leviathan into providing more health and damage to your vehicle, this again has no bearing on the discussion at hand.

It does have a bearing on the discussion, because the addon enourages players to make bad decisions about their gear. PLayers who may not read up on forums ect to learn more of what they need to know may just assume higher iLvl = better. Most of the time they would be right, but there are certain situations (such as holy paladin libram) where the best item is not what you would expect.

You assume that a widely used addon is causing server instability and increasing latency between parties, if this were true blizzard would address the issue.

Tell me what blizzard can do to adress the issue? It is an addon that uses item level on gear to determine a number. It needs to send an recieve a lot of information (every armour slot for every player, however often if updates) to achieve this. What could blizzard possibly do, aside from speeding up the whole game or tell players to just buy better computers/internet?

As to your references to olympic medal winners in the epeen section, you are way off the mark. Sure, medal winners take pride and wear their medals, but they dont say "you have to have an olympic medal to play with me" or run around shouting "hey look at me medal, I'm better than you".

You may think it is helping to, in your own words, "breath some high-end breath in the mmo-champion forums", but you are just making things worse. Making long threads using high level language to make yourself sound clever are not the way to approach the MMO community. I can understand what you wrote perfectly and could probably write in that style if I so wished, but why? Do you not understand that a lot of the people on here do not speak English as a first language?
Writing in a stylish fashion does not make you clever, it makes you want to look clever. A truely clever person would write in a way which is more likely to be understood, which is not this way.

As you may have guessed, I don't like you, and I honestly hope you get banned again for something. In my opinion, this post does not deserve a ban, because it is trying to exaplin something in a non-offensive way. But, the attitude you take towards it leaves much to be desired.

[Sarpanti]

I like this analogy.

So do I. In fact, I'm sigging it lol.

[Nemrod]

Think harder about the post that you responded to because you completely missed the point.

I did think, and came to the conclusion my point is still valid.
The addon claims, as quoted by the thread starter, to show the maximum potential of a player, which it clearly not does. A GS of 5000 should be enough for ICC10 (whatever), however if those 5000 points are from PvP gear I highly doubt you will get very far.

I do not care about the addon, I do care about self righteous people basing their "logic" on false assumptions and presenting a personal view as the one and only truth. So the addon itself does not do, what it's made to do. Basing any further "logical" arguments on that failure just leads to more failure.
If the description would say: Gearscore adds up the itemlevel of all your items, then we can talk. But it does say differently.
A hunter with 5000 GS in PvP gear will have zero to very little +hit, a hunter with 4800 GS in proper PvE gear has more potential despite having 200 less GS.

[vesseblah]

What is the perceived problem?
What Gearscore does is assign a numerical value of potential output from a mathematical standpoint of what that specific character is capable of in the gear they are wearing.

It might be so in ideal world, but it's not true in reality.

Internally in WoW's engine itemizatation works by multiplying item's level by a constant which varies by item rarity level, and the total is the amount of points available for distribution between various game mechanical benefits. Gearscore uses simplified version of that same formula to sum together every piece of equipment you're wearing. Where it fails is that the sum does not in any way reveal how the itemization budget is divided among stats.

For example 60 spirit is worthless for a paladin, but in itemization budget it weights just as much as 60 intellect. End result is that players can wear totally inappropriate gear but still have high gearscore according to the addon. It does not necessarily reflect to the player's potential in any way, and there lies the biggest problem with the addon. Until it gets smart enough to fill the slot of tools like Rawr, it remains a problem and a fallacy to rely on it blindly no matter how many paragraphs of drivel you waste trying to prove otherwise.

E-Peen

What is the perceived problem?
The community has deemed it unacceptable to take pride in your accomplishments, and doubly unacceptable to do so publicly. This is the equivalent to bashing an Olympic athlete for doing press releases wearing their gold silver or bronze medals well after the event they earned them from was finished. Substitute medals and olympic athletes with football players and superbowl rings, or boxers and wrestlers with title belts. The community finds it offensive that the achievers of these goals take pride in their success and immediately attach the phrase "flexing their e-peen".

Could've quoted almost any paragraph of the epeen text, but the one above fits best...

In almost every list Pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God).

From "Seven deadly sins", wikipedia

Hubris is the reason why ePeening is considered to be improper behavior. End of discussion.

Speaking of hubris, I'll quote here the first paragraph of first posting... From a person who again tries to take the role of jury, judge and executioner of the whole community.

There are things in every community that are so mindbogglingly ignorant that just mentioning it tears the community in half. These issues deserve to be looked into examined and exposed for the nonsense that truly are and I am going to do just that for one of the largest problems plaguing the MMO-C community today.

And the topic of this thread is just icing on the cake...

[rockmannx]

Here's a good analogy for you:

Gun's don't kill people, people with Gun's kill people.

I get your point, you shouldn't hate the addon, you should blame morons that use the addon in the wrong way. The problem is that the vast vast majority of people use it as the be-all end-all decision maker in bringing someone to a raid (usually a pug), when in reality it should only be used as a tool towards an end decision. Not to mention the addon just panders to the braindead masses that play this game, who think a number is more important than a proper rotation and balance of character stats to maximize their "score". Basically, the addon has done more damage to the game than it has helped.

@adysux (About hitler): You should be banned from the site for spewing that nonsense.

[Ithnaar]

And people have been denied access to groups based on their gear for years before gearscore even existed anyway, gearscore is just another tool that enables them to do so rather than the cause of it.

I agree completely. What GearScore does though, is makes it easier to enforce arbitrary and illusory limits.

No GearScore : You inspect someone and discover that he has mostly 25-man ToC gear, no blues... he'll probably do OK.

Gearscore : He has a gearscore of 5575. Everyone knows you need a score of 5600 to go to ICC. You don't get to go !

[iceberg265]

Using fancy words makes your nonsene not true.

Just because the words are too big for you to understand doesn't make them not true.

[Nayt]

. Furthermore to hate GearScore for 'denying you access to raids' is like hating your credit score for denying you access to a loan. These things exist for a reason, if they were abolished another form would arise because the reason they exist has not been addressed.

The difficulty here is that the people supplying the loans (RL's asking for GS) don't have any kind of firm grasp on what is actually required. Imagine being told you must have a credit rating of 740 just to get a measly $30k loan for a vehicle, and then getting railed with a 7% APR. It's not dissimilar to 10 man VOA requiring 5.5k GS for a DPS.

A solution would be to allow the GS mod to evolve even further, allow it to continue a bit further on down the rabbit hole if you will. 'The higher your GearScore the higher your potential to heal/dps/tank.' If it could list out somebody's potential then people could properly understand what their GS actually meens. With a 4.8k GS I can personally pump out over 5.5K DPS on standard heroics. Should that be the 'standard' or just the 'potential'? Obviously it's just the potential, as most players with a 5k GS can barely manage to hold 3-4k DPS for any extended period of time.

If the GS mod said:

5.0 - 5.5k GS = Max DPS of 5-6k
5.5 - 6.0k GS = Max DPS of 6-6.5K

5.0 - 5.5k GS = Max HPS of 10-15k
ect. ect.

Perhaps it could be better utilized, but until then it is still just a tool which was made to perform a job. Whether or not people use the right tools or use even use them correctly will always be up to the individual.


-------------------------
PS - Well formulated post BTW

[iceberg265]

Until it gets smart enough to fill the slot of tools like Rawr, it remains a problem and a fallacy to rely on it blindly no matter how many paragraphs of drivel you waste trying to prove otherwise.

No one is arguing that gearscore should be blindly followed. It is a tool, nothing more.

If I hit you with a hammer, will you go whining to Home Depot forums that hammers are the devil?

[Remnas]

Solution to all GS issues: WoW Heroes.com

1) gives a non inflated score based on gear and enchants/gems

2) allows you to see the players full list of raiding achievements

3) shows you their gear + enchants/gems

just keep firefox open while wow is running in windowed mode. problem solved

[sicness]

You may think it is helping to, in your own words, "breath some high-end breath in the mmo-champion forums", but you are just making things worse. Making long threads using high level language to make yourself sound clever are not the way to approach the MMO community. I can understand what you wrote perfectly and could probably write in that style if I so wished, but why? Do you not understand that a lot of the people on here do not speak English as a first language?
Writing in a stylish fashion does not make you clever, it makes you want to look clever. A truely clever person would write in a way which is more likely to be understood, which is not this way.

As you may have guessed, I don't like you, and I honestly hope you get banned again for something. In my opinion, this post does not deserve a ban, because it is trying to exaplin something in a non-offensive way. But, the attitude you take towards it leaves much to be desired.

I've always felt a level of aggression toward sulfuric in his posting and I think you just nailed why.