There are two major types of video games. There are games where discovering the proper strategy is the difficult aspect and games where enacting the proper strategy is the difficult aspect. Of course, it's more of a spectrum than two absolutes, but I'll provide games as close to the absolute as I can.
First, consider the game 3 in Three. If you've never heard of it, I suggest taking a look, though getting it running on a modern computer is quite a hassle. It's basically a logic game, with around 50 puzzles. In nearly every single one, if you can answer the logic puzzle, you're done. For example, in one puzzle, called Level 8, it gives you a set of clues, each of which leads to a word ending in the sound -ate. For example, "to blow up" would be "inflate." The difficulty is in discovering what to do; There's zero difficulty in typing in the correct word.
On the opposite end, consider Ikaruga. That's a video showing exactly how to do the 5th level. With that information, do you think you could pick up a copy of the game and copy what he did?
Games where solving the puzzle is more challenging than performing the actions were much more popular when games were new. The issue is that in the modern day, with the advent of communication and the internet, the entire challenge of the game can be bypassed. To be fair, people who truly enjoy the puzzle-solving aspect will solve the game on their own with no help, and that's all well and good. However, as soon as one person has solved the puzzle, all information necessary to perfect the game is available.
World of Warcraft sits on a very interesting line in this regard. While PvP is necessarily the latter, PvE is effectively the highest level of competition in the former. The entire challenge is solving the 'puzzle' of the boss fight. Once it's been solved, once you have a strategy, the fight is repeatable. If you post a video of a world first kill, there are usually dozens of copycats very soon afterward. Notable exceptions have been Firefighter and Yogg-0.
This is why people say WoW doesn't take any skill. Because once the strategy is well known, the puzzle has been solved and anyone remotely competent can copy the solution. It's the root of the attempt cap- It's supposed to better showcase skill when all it really does is forces people to spend more time solving the puzzle in simulations rather than in attempts. It's supposed to separate out bads by preventing them from finishing the boss, but all it really does is focus a lens on who does and does not have the right strategy.
I personally despise the attempt cap system. I hate it abjectly. I feel that fights as complex and difficult as the original Firefighter or Yogg-0 cannot coexist with an attempt-capped system, and as such the system will inherently lower the top-end of the game. But if fights were designed where the challenge was in performing the boss fight rather than in discovering the strategy, maybe attempt caps could finally go away.
Maybe I'm just dreaming of the world I want rather than the best course of action for WoW itself. Who knows.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Great Shadowmourne Project
Shadowmourne will not be fully available until theoretically 36 days from now. Lets say that you're not going to be getting your guilds' first Shadowmourne. However, you want to get that axe as fast as possible. It is unclear whether or not shards for the last step will drop for multiple characters at the same time. In order to maximize potential, it's in your best interest to earn your own Shadowmourne between now and then. The only hard part of this is 25 Primordial Saronite.
On my server, each Primordial Saronite is worth P on the AH. Your current starting gold is S. D is the number of days before you can start earning shards for Shadowmourne. You can look at it two ways; Either you need to increase your wealth by a set amount every day to finish off a Shadowmourne or you need to increase your wealth by a set percentage every day.
If you want to do a set amount, it's simple:
(25P - S) / D = amount
If you want to do a set percentage, it's a little harder:
(25P / S ) ^ (1/D) = rate
If you start with 5,000g, Saronite is worth 3,000g, and there are 45 days left, you need either:
~ 1,560g per day
~ 6.2% wealth per day
[This is where I started]
If you start with 15,000g, Saronite is worth 3,000g, and there are 36 days left, you need either:
~ 1,670g per day
~ 4.6% wealth per day
[This is where I am]
So go get auctioneer and get to work, it's not that hard really. Even if you're starting around 5kg right now, you only need 7.8% wealth per day. That's only 390g right now! Start scanning the AH and do some dailies and you're on the right track.
On my server, each Primordial Saronite is worth P on the AH. Your current starting gold is S. D is the number of days before you can start earning shards for Shadowmourne. You can look at it two ways; Either you need to increase your wealth by a set amount every day to finish off a Shadowmourne or you need to increase your wealth by a set percentage every day.
If you want to do a set amount, it's simple:
(25P - S) / D = amount
If you want to do a set percentage, it's a little harder:
(25P / S ) ^ (1/D) = rate
If you start with 5,000g, Saronite is worth 3,000g, and there are 45 days left, you need either:
~ 1,560g per day
~ 6.2% wealth per day
[This is where I started]
If you start with 15,000g, Saronite is worth 3,000g, and there are 36 days left, you need either:
~ 1,670g per day
~ 4.6% wealth per day
[This is where I am]
So go get auctioneer and get to work, it's not that hard really. Even if you're starting around 5kg right now, you only need 7.8% wealth per day. That's only 390g right now! Start scanning the AH and do some dailies and you're on the right track.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Emblems of PAIN
In both 3.2 and 3.3, Blizzard has decided to revitalize the Heroic scene. I can completely understand the reasoning. If 10% of their player base is dedicated to raiding and 80% does heroics more than raids (The remaining 10% being chronic levelers) then it's good sense to focus on Heroics, add new ones, improve their rewards, and keep them relevant. If you can force the top 10% of players to do heroics, that even makes it better for the middle 80% because they can get carried. I'm assuming that getting carried, while not the best thing ever, is better than wiping repeatedly in dungeons. Just a guess.
Unfortunately, the way Blizzard has chosen to do this is excruciatingly painful for anyone who wants to absolutely maximize their performance in raids.
I am a raider in one of the top guilds worldwide. It's my goal to maintain the best possible gear I can, both because I want to be as good as I can be and because I don't want to let down my guild. All guild members are required to be proficient at all roles. So, I need to have an ICC level tanking set in addition to an ICC level DPS set. Furthering this, ICC heralds the release of Shadowmourne, a 2H legendary, which it's also in my best interest to get. Since I'm most likely not first or second in line for Shadowmourne, it would be prudent of me to get as many materials as I can for that myself.
Now, looking at it simply, that's:
(90 + 90 + 90 + 60 + 60) * 2 = 780 badges for each tier set (Need all 5 pieces for various sets).
23 * 25 = 575 badges for Shadowmourne
30 * 2 = 60 badges for Sigils
That's a minimum of 1,415 badges.
Presently, ICC gives you 8 per week. Done in 10 and 25, that's 16. 5 more for the raid weekly gives you 21 badges. Doing heroics nets 14 badges a week. Doing the daily heroic each day gives you almost as many badges as doing ICC 10 and 25. Daily heroics plus the raid weekly, which so far has been Naxxramas twice and Malygos once, is *definitely* more than ICC.
Even at max production rate from ICC (12 bosses * 2/boss * 2 runs) = 48 + 5 [Raid weekly] + 14 [Weekly heroics] + 14 [Heroics on an alt] + 5 [Raid weekly on an alt] Nets 86 badges per week, or 17 weeks of doing the heroic daily twice a day, full clearing ICC twice, a week, and doing the raid weekly twice a week.
I understand incentivizing heroics. I understand wanting to pull raiders down so they can help out newer/less-geared players. But putting forth something like this is soul draining. Of course, it has led to The Great Shadowmourne Project, which I'll talk about tomorrow, so it can't be all bad.
Unfortunately, the way Blizzard has chosen to do this is excruciatingly painful for anyone who wants to absolutely maximize their performance in raids.
I am a raider in one of the top guilds worldwide. It's my goal to maintain the best possible gear I can, both because I want to be as good as I can be and because I don't want to let down my guild. All guild members are required to be proficient at all roles. So, I need to have an ICC level tanking set in addition to an ICC level DPS set. Furthering this, ICC heralds the release of Shadowmourne, a 2H legendary, which it's also in my best interest to get. Since I'm most likely not first or second in line for Shadowmourne, it would be prudent of me to get as many materials as I can for that myself.
Now, looking at it simply, that's:
(90 + 90 + 90 + 60 + 60) * 2 = 780 badges for each tier set (Need all 5 pieces for various sets).
23 * 25 = 575 badges for Shadowmourne
30 * 2 = 60 badges for Sigils
That's a minimum of 1,415 badges.
Presently, ICC gives you 8 per week. Done in 10 and 25, that's 16. 5 more for the raid weekly gives you 21 badges. Doing heroics nets 14 badges a week. Doing the daily heroic each day gives you almost as many badges as doing ICC 10 and 25. Daily heroics plus the raid weekly, which so far has been Naxxramas twice and Malygos once, is *definitely* more than ICC.
Even at max production rate from ICC (12 bosses * 2/boss * 2 runs) = 48 + 5 [Raid weekly] + 14 [Weekly heroics] + 14 [Heroics on an alt] + 5 [Raid weekly on an alt] Nets 86 badges per week, or 17 weeks of doing the heroic daily twice a day, full clearing ICC twice, a week, and doing the raid weekly twice a week.
I understand incentivizing heroics. I understand wanting to pull raiders down so they can help out newer/less-geared players. But putting forth something like this is soul draining. Of course, it has led to The Great Shadowmourne Project, which I'll talk about tomorrow, so it can't be all bad.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
World of Logs
Ok, so, hopefully your guild is using World of Logs to record your raids. I get requests from old friends via facebook occasionally to review raid performance, help out with boss strats, figure out what's going wrong, etc.
You'd be amazed how much you can learn from a WoL parse; I highly suggest you spend a little time reviewing each raid. You cannot improve if you don't know what you're doing wrong, and sometimes you can find really strikingly obvious mistakes in WoL that should be fixed immediately.
Now, let me make one point; Premonition is really cool about mistakes. I think one of the first things Xav said to me was that it's a terrible idea to dwell on mistakes, because then we'd never get any real raiding done. Following this philosophy, Premo gives a *ton* of leeway; If you're doing something wrong, you're far more likely to be told, "Hey, this is what you're doing wrong, you'll do way better if you correct it" than, "Hey, you did something wrong, get out of my guild." Point being, don't look at your raiders, determine someone was attacking the wrong target, and gkick them. Once people know you have access to all this information, people will do the right thing more often.
First off, it's pretty easy to find someone in World of Logs. Lets say I want to look up how Kailee did on a specific fight
http://worldoflogs.com/realms/#realms-en_US
That lets us go to any realm, which lets us select any guild on that realm. Pretty easy to find Kailee's guild from there: http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/2335/
Now you can go to a specific fight and compare damage numbers; Maybe looking at DPS, then damage per hit to see if any discrepancy is based on gear, look at number of each attack used based on time and figure out if discrepancies are based on rotation differences, anything you want!
But there's even more information than meets the eye. Using the Query Browser (Work out the stuff on your own, I'm lazy) you can get:
[20:49:32.562] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:49:42.437] Parn's Shield Bash interrupts Eydis Darkbane's Twin's Pact
[20:50:17.125] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:50:30.734] Parn's Shield Bash interrupts Fjola Lightbane's Twin's Pact
[20:51:02.093] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:51:16.140] Nahid's Wind Shear interrupts Fjola Lightbane's Twin's Pact
Awesome, now we have time sets. During the first one, people attacking Lightbane are doing it wrong, during the second two, people attacking Darkbane are doing it wrong. each tick is one second, the fight starts at 20:47:15 (4830). So our first cut is 20:49:32, which is 2:17 later or 137 ticks, and lasts 10 seconds, so 4967 to 4977. Cutting to this point, we can go to Lightbane's Damage Taken by Actor
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ib0ootwyef49pcch/details/135/?s=4967&e=4977#tab-dmgactor
Doing that for the rest:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ib0ootwyef49pcch/details/134/?s=5012&e=5025#tab-dmgactor
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ib0ootwyef49pcch/details/134/?s=5057&e=5071#tab-dmgactor
And thus you can see who did damage to the wrong target; You can see that a rogue on the second one either didn't swap or swapped late. Of course, this hardly scratches the surface of what you can do with world of logs; It's really awesome for all sorts of raid-browsing information.
Use it, learn from it, improve yourself and your raid.
You'd be amazed how much you can learn from a WoL parse; I highly suggest you spend a little time reviewing each raid. You cannot improve if you don't know what you're doing wrong, and sometimes you can find really strikingly obvious mistakes in WoL that should be fixed immediately.
Now, let me make one point; Premonition is really cool about mistakes. I think one of the first things Xav said to me was that it's a terrible idea to dwell on mistakes, because then we'd never get any real raiding done. Following this philosophy, Premo gives a *ton* of leeway; If you're doing something wrong, you're far more likely to be told, "Hey, this is what you're doing wrong, you'll do way better if you correct it" than, "Hey, you did something wrong, get out of my guild." Point being, don't look at your raiders, determine someone was attacking the wrong target, and gkick them. Once people know you have access to all this information, people will do the right thing more often.
First off, it's pretty easy to find someone in World of Logs. Lets say I want to look up how Kailee did on a specific fight
http://worldoflogs.com/realms/#realms-en_US
That lets us go to any realm, which lets us select any guild on that realm. Pretty easy to find Kailee's guild from there: http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/2335/
Now you can go to a specific fight and compare damage numbers; Maybe looking at DPS, then damage per hit to see if any discrepancy is based on gear, look at number of each attack used based on time and figure out if discrepancies are based on rotation differences, anything you want!
But there's even more information than meets the eye. Using the Query Browser (Work out the stuff on your own, I'm lazy) you can get:
[20:49:32.562] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:49:42.437] Parn's Shield Bash interrupts Eydis Darkbane's Twin's Pact
[20:50:17.125] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:50:30.734] Parn's Shield Bash interrupts Fjola Lightbane's Twin's Pact
[20:51:02.093] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:51:16.140] Nahid's Wind Shear interrupts Fjola Lightbane's Twin's Pact
Awesome, now we have time sets. During the first one, people attacking Lightbane are doing it wrong, during the second two, people attacking Darkbane are doing it wrong. each tick is one second, the fight starts at 20:47:15 (4830). So our first cut is 20:49:32, which is 2:17 later or 137 ticks, and lasts 10 seconds, so 4967 to 4977. Cutting to this point, we can go to Lightbane's Damage Taken by Actor
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ib0ootwyef49pcch/details/135/?s=4967&e=4977#tab-dmgactor
Doing that for the rest:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ib0ootwyef49pcch/details/134/?s=5012&e=5025#tab-dmgactor
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ib0ootwyef49pcch/details/134/?s=5057&e=5071#tab-dmgactor
And thus you can see who did damage to the wrong target; You can see that a rogue on the second one either didn't swap or swapped late. Of course, this hardly scratches the surface of what you can do with world of logs; It's really awesome for all sorts of raid-browsing information.
Use it, learn from it, improve yourself and your raid.
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